NANOMEDICINE
Quantum dots - water-soluble crystals made of semiconductor material - have been around since the 1980s, when scientists thought they might be useful for new electronic and optical devices. But now it appears quantum dots may prove more promising in medicine. The crystals, one ten-millionth of an inch in size, can be dissolved in water and used as probes to track antibodies, viruses, proteins, or DNA within the human body. When light is beamed in their direction, they are illuminated like molecule-sized LEDs. "Stick it on a molecule and you can see where it is and what it does," says Joel Martin, cofounder of Palo Alto-based Quantum Dot Corporation (www.qdots.com). The nanofirm, founded in November 1998, recently raised $7.5 million in venture capital.
Quantum dot technology may soon allow doctors to perform an array of fast and inexpensive diagnostic tests. The company is currently working on a project with the National Institutes of Health in which quantum dots are being used to examine tissue arrays from breast cancer biopsies.
In the future, probes made to identify every known virus could be injected into the human body, where they'd circulate as continuous monitors. A visit to your doctor would allow them to screen for everything at a nanoglance.
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