Nanomedicine: From lab to Industry

has become a booming industry where more than 1000 companies and 130 nanotech-based drugs worldwide have propped up. It is anticipated that a minimum of $4 billion is being invested every year in this sector. As the industry continues to boom, it is expected to have a deep impact on the economy. Keeping up with this trend, research in nanomedicine has been moving ahead with tremendous pace. Each year, our inventory of materials for nanomedicine has been increasing enormously with a lot of work being published from different labs across the globe. Despite the many interesting results reported in the literature, there still exists a big void that prevents many of these nanomaterials to be translated from mere lab studies to industrial production. The problem mainly lies with scalability. It is at times not feasible to scale up the production of many of these nanocrystals with controlled morphology and sizes by simply increasing the size and amount of the reactors and reagents, respectively. Even if this scalability issue is addressed, maintaining the high quality of the desired products at low cost becomes a challenge. No doubt the issues related to toxicity and environmental impact of nanoscale materials needs to be also taken into consideration. But these challenges have not stopped researchers from functionalizing nanomaterials with biomolecules or structures making it useful for both in vivo and in vitro biomedical applications. This integration materialscience with biology at nanoscale has led to the development of diagnostic tools, imaging kits, biomarkers, analytical tools, etc. The national nanotechnology initiatives taken up worldwide expectto drive these new commercial applications in the pharmaceutical sector. As our capabilities for fabricating nanomaterials progressively continues, we should always try to channelize our efforts into commercial applications. The purpose of “Journal of Nanomedicine Research” is to present a series of articles and reviews by the leading experts worldwide who can provide insights on the recent developments in nanomaterials. The idea is to the acquaint readers with the multiple facets of nanomaterials in medicine and biomedical related areas. We hope that all readers will find that the work presented in the journal beneficial to their existing research and will begin to explore into this exciting field of nanomedicine if they have not already done so. Editorial