Evidence is accumulating that nanotechnology may enable better early warning systems for cancer and heart disease, cures for progressive diseases like cystic fibrosis, techniques for making implants like artificial hips more successful, and even artificial kidneys.

Now, for example, device makers not only shape the surfaces of their products, but they may also add specialty coatings like those from Biophan Technologies. Biophan’s coatings, made up of magnetic particles 20 nanometers to 40 nanometers across, make the devices visible to magnetic resonance imaging machines used to track their placement.

Quantum dots, metallic particles that emit bright light in a color range that varies with their size, are now frequently used to study tumors and locate proteins that researchers want to study. By attaching antibodies that prefer to bind with specific types of cells to dots of different sizes, the researchers can get a multicolored image showing the location and concentration of many elements inside a tissue sample.

Nanoparticles may help researchers overcome obstacles in gene therapy, which seeks to treat genetically inherited diseases like cystic fibrosis by implanting healthy genes to do the work of damaged ones.

Nanoparticles may also be used to deliver heat to cancer cells to kill them.