**5. Biocompatibility**

Biocompatibility is related to the behaviour of biomaterials in various contexts. It means that the biomaterial is able to get prompt and exact response from the host/tissue materials in different and specific situations. The most important common definitions related to the term of biocompatibility are the following:


### **6. Nanotechnology in life sciences**

The major problems like cancer, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease are subject to nanoparticle utilizations for surgery and therapy. Also some other diseases like cardiovascular ones, multiple sclerosis and inflammatory or other infectious diseases are subjects for nanotechnology interference. This field is called nanomedicine. Different researches are conducted on nanocomposites or doped nanocomposites for use as interventions involving bones, cartilages, muscles, etc.

Molecules can be absorbed on the surface of single-walled carbon nanotubes. They could greatly influence the electrical properties or could serve as sensors with very high sensitivity and selectivity.

Advanced biosensors with novel features can be developed with the help of carbon nanotubes (CNT). This technology is also being used to develop sensors for cancer diagnostics. Though CNT is inert, it can be functionalized at the tip with a probe molecule. Their study uses atomic force microscopy (AFM) as an experimental platform.

Some of the researches in biomedicine have shown that carbon nanotubes can also be used for drug delivery. Magnetic nanoparticles are used to isolate and group stem cells. They also can be used in digital imaging methods of cells. Because of their very small size, nanoparticles represent a good candidate to be used in oncology imaging studies. Due to the quantum confinement properties, they can be used in imaging of tumour sites. Compared to organic dyes, nanoparticles have higher brightness and more efficient fluorescence efficiency leading to higher contrast in image reconstructions. Due to their high surface-area-to-volume ratio, it is possible to bind them to tumour cells. Because of their small size, they can accumulate on tumour sites with high probability.

#### **6.1 Cancer research**

Due to the small size of nanoparticles, they can be of great use in oncology, particularly in imaging. Nanoparticles, such as quantum dots with quantum confinement properties, such as size-tunable light emission, can be used in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging, to produce exceptional images of tumour sites. As compared to organic dyes, nanoparticles are much brighter and need only one light source for excitation. Thus, the fluorescent quantum dots could produce a higher contrast image at a lower cost than organic dyes used as contrast media. But quantum dots are usually made of quite toxic elements.

## *Prologue: Thin-Film Synthesis and Application for Medical and Biological Use DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.84968*

Nanoparticles have a special property of high surface-area-to-volume ratio, which allows various functional groups to get attached to a nanoparticle and thus bind to certain tumour cells. Furthermore, the 10–100 nm size of nanoparticles allows them to preferentially accumulate at tumour sites as tumours lack an effective lymphatic drainage system. Multifunctional nanoparticles can be manufactured that would detect, image and then treat a tumour in future cancer. Nanowires are used to prepare sensor chips, which can detect proteins and other biomarkers left behind by cancer cells and detect and make diagnosis of cancer possible in the early stages from a single drop of a patient's blood.

The possible applications of various nanosystems in cancer therapy [12]:

