Emerging Micro- and Nanotechnologies for Medical and Pharmacological Applications

In recent years, a large amount of novel micro- and nanotechnologies have been extensively explored with enormous positive impacts on human health. These emerging micro- and nanotechnologies can be applied in organ/tissue/cell/sub-cell levels of the body with special functions, presenting new avenues for both researchers and clinicians to explore their quest to improve diagnostics, tissue regeneration, cardiovascular interventional therapy, drug delivery, immunotherapy, and many other medical applications; presenting an enormous potential to solve critical issues related to the treatment of important human diseases (e.g., cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, wound, etc.) Moreover, micro- and nanotechnologies provide more possibilities of applications as well as the combination of the required therapeutic agents with device-integrated biomaterials that can serve as sensors and carriers. Examples include biomaterials and tissue engineering (e.g., stem cells engineering, wound healing, heart valve tissue engineering, bioengineering regenerative medicine scaffolds, disease modeling with engineered microtissues, etc.), microfluidics and medical devices (e.g., microfluidic technologies to diagnose disease, microneedle application, three dimensional bioprinting, bio-Inspired micro and nano electronic systems for robotics, wearable sensors, liquid biopsy testing, etc.), as well as nanotechnology materials (functionalized nanocarriers in drug delivery, bioresponsive drug delivery, nanotechnology-based diagnosis/detection approaches, etc.).

While the clinical applications of micro- and nanotechnologies are still in the initial period, a significant number of promising projects are in advanced experimental stages and preliminary clinical trials. The present Research Topic aims to give an overview of the most exciting progress and the latest advances in the field of drug design/delivery, focusing on how these technologies will impact the drug uptake/assimilation and affect the human organism.

Participants will acquire the fundamentals and advances on three dimensional bioprinting, bio- microelectromechanical systems (bioMEMS), biomaterials, tissue engineering, immunotherapy, and drug delivery. We believe that this Research Topic will give further insights in the development of novel micro- and nanotechnologies for solving critical issues of major human diseases, which may significantly pave the way for the revolution of these emerging techniques and materials in improving human health worldwide.