In medicine, finding a substance that attacks cancerous tumors without destroying the healthy tissue around it has long been the Holy Grail.From targeted remedies such as monoclonal antibodies to surgery, cancer has still managed to elude a treatment that discretely and separately attacks it alone.

Nanotechnologies, however – the manipulation of matter at a molecular and even atomic scale to penetrate living cells — are holding out the promise of opening a new front against deadly conditions from cancer to Ebola.According to Dr Thomas Webster, the chair of chemical engineering atNortheastern University in Boston, research into medical nanotechnology is gaining pace and the medical establishment is starting to sit up and pay attention.

At the core of the technology is the ability to attach drugs, and in some cases metals and minerals, to nanoparticles that would then bind themselves to life threatening cancer cells or viruses.In one study, Dr Webster’s team is developing methods to attach gold nanoparticles to cancer cells.Infrared light would then heat up the nanoparticles, killing the cancer cells with heat but leaving the healthy cells alive to do their job.

“This technology has been studied for the better part of a decade, but we’re looking at ways of making it better,” Dr Webster told CNN. “One that we’ve created in the lab we’ve called ‘nanostars.’”A star shape has a lot more surface area, so they can kill cancer cells faster than a nanosphere because they heat up faster.”Even if it’s carrying a drug, a star has a lot more surface area on which to attach it — it’s got a different morphology.”

While nanoparticle technology still has many years of research ahead of it, nanostructured surfaces are already becoming part of the medical firmament.”These are being approved by the Food and Drug Administration and we’re seeing better bone growth, better tissue growth and we’re seeing the ability to decrease infection using these materials.”

These developments, he said, were helping patients in the here and now.

“What we’re using with this is the same materials that we are implanting today — so titantium for hip implants, polyvinyl chloride for catheters, silicone for breast implants.”We’re doing a lot of work with putting nanofeatures on materials that could stop cancers from coming back.”One successful area, he said, had been the implanting of nanofeatures on catheters; a common vehicle of infection where catheters are often reused.

“We’re taking what’s currently being used, we take it off the shelf, we then figure out a way to put nanofeatures on there and we see significant improvements.”It’s a wonderful way to give an immediate solution to nanomedicine; so that the public, scientists and clinicians can see how nanomedicine can help patients today, not 10 years down the road.”