Nanotechnology in oncology

Engineered devices and systems have had a major impact in medicine. During the last three decades, for example, medical imaging has witnessed the introduction of a succession of revolutionary image capture devices grounded on clear understanding of human physiology and anatomy. Cancer has now surpassed cardiac disease as the leading cause of human death. The National Cancer Institute of the United States has set a challenge goal to eliminate suffering and death due to cancer by 2015. In this article, Professors Jie Chen and Stephen Wong provide a detailed overview of how the development of bioengineering devices and tools at the nanoscale can play an important role in achieving this goal.