What is Medical Nanotechnology?

Medical nanotechnology is an emerging area that seeks to use microscopic robots, sensors, cameras or other devices to noninvasively diagnose, protect and treat patients from inside their own bodies, sometimes at the scale of individual cells. Much of this technology remains little more than science-fiction fantasy, but one medical nanotechnology that might reach fruition in the coming decade is the use of nanoscale particles to deliver drugs to specific sites within a patient's body.

Week's scientific term:

Ex vivo

1. The Latin meaning of "ex vivo" is “out of the living”.
2. In biological science, ex vivo refers to experimentation or measurements done in or on living cell or tissue collected from an organism and cultured in a laboratory apparatus. For example, experiment that involves cell line (cell culture) or tissue cultures are ex vivo studies. HeLa(Henrietta Lacks) and CHO (Chinese hamster ovary) are eamaples of two cell lines, of which, the formar one originate with human and later one originate with animal.
3. Ex vivo should not be confused with the term “in vitro”. Usually, ex vivo describes the type of a study that involves living cell or tissue whereas “in vitro” used to indicate studies conducted in an artifical environment outside the cell or host. Commonly, ex vivo studies are usually performed in vitro.