Breakthroughs in Nanomedicine
Released on 04/02/2014
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I'm sure that you have someone that has cancer
and you have seen that person going through chemotherapy.
It's awful.
Or, hopefully you haven't seen yet
people suffering of Alzheimer
Parkinson
AIDS
There's plenty of problems,
actual problems affecting the human health.
Nanotechnology has the power to change this.
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[Sonia on phones] So we really need to do something.
They're not effective anymore.
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Imagine that we can divide one meter in one billion part.
One of these part is an nanometer.
Nanotechnology is the science that study
the material that are a few nanometers.
For example, viruses are a hundred nanometers.
DNA, two nanometers
and atoms are like 1.1 nanometers.
So for example, you can see your hair, okay?
These guys, 80,000 nanometers.
Nanotechnology not allowed us to visualize small things
but actually to create things.
We can create nanomaterials from bigger structures
or by putting atom by atom together.
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So one of the things that I have in the lab
is these nanoparticles of metal nanoparticles, okay?
So these metal nanoparticles kills the bacteria, okay?
In a very, very efficient way.
So imagine that you can have these nanoparticles
in a surface in all the air conditioners, for example.
(Sonia talking in meeting)
Okay, but think about it.
Not everything has to be internal.
We don't have to always take things.
How many times you fly in a plane and you get sick
because one person is sick?
All the time.
So imagine that you have these nanoparticles
all around the air purification system
so every time that something goes with a bacteria or virus
get in contact with these nanoparticles,
metallic nanoparticles, it will explode
so it will be there but it will be nontoxic,
it will not infect other people.
This nanoparticle kill bacteria very effectively.
So what we have here is a new generation of antibiotics,
an antiobiotic that is metallic
and because it's metallic, it will never confer resistance.
Bacteria will never be resistant to these antibiotics.
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I'm thinking to actually apply it on planes, obviously
but more important, at hospitals.
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However, I still don't know
if the human body will accept it
so we're trying to make something different,
change the way of thinking what is an antibiotic.
I'd love to know how nanotechnologists feel about
the persistent and systemic toxicity questions
that are constantly raised and what studies--
The problem that we have is that the risk
on nanotechnology is really high right now
so we have a strong regulation of the things
that we can or we cannot do.
And this needs to be changed, completely.
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Starring: Dr. Sonia Trigueros
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