Biomedical applications and adverse health effects of nanomaterials

We summarize recent development of nanomaterials as new tools in pharmaceutical research, molecular device designing, biomedical detection and imaging. A number of nanomaterials, including carbon based nanomaterials (Gd@C82(OH)22)n, C60(OH)22 and C60(C(COOH)2)2 etc., exhibit a very high antineoplastic efficiency and show almost no toxicity in vivo and in vitro. The underlying mechanism is related with combination of the modulation of oxidative stress, reduction of the blood supply to tumor tissues and activation of the host immune system. As the potential artificial water channel, water flow rate through carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with radius of 1-2 nm was about 3 orders of magnitude faster than the conventional nonslip hydrodynamic flow. At the same time, the toxicity of nanomaterials should be noticed. However, recent studies indicate that we have some methods to reduce the toxicity of nanomaterials such as chemical modification or binding proteins on the surface.