Aren’t nanotubes grand? Sure, you can build space elevators with them. Create electronic components and faster computer chips. Nanotubes can one day build stronger skyscrapers and betterbody armor.
But did you know they could smell cancer? Deliver drugs to cancer? And, now, burn cancer. Funky.
The reason I bring this up is that I have been thinking about how innovation might be driven by the government grant process, and how that might be a good thing. As I probably wrote a thousand times in press releases, nanotech is on the scale of life, so some of the first applications of nanotechnology — outside of Dockers’ pants and the realm of materials science — will be (is) in life science.
And, while I can’t prove it, I think what is driving some of this thinking is the grant process. Funding is tight, so researchers look to put in practical uses for their work when writing their grant applications. Cancer is a biggie, so…if you write it into the grant, it might get more interest. If it isn’t building better widgets, nanotech researchers are building better cancer killers. I only wonder how many of these ideas fall flat because the engineers aren’t getting the chance to work with biologists. But of course, that’s not always the case.
Rice University is big into nanotech, too. Their institute even has a religion professor on the faculty, I guess in case things get too crazy…
http://cnst.rice.edu/about.cfm?doc_id=1215
I’ve seen (and judged) some of the cancer-targeting nanosphere research presented in a poster at research day here. It wasn’t too inspiring in that the particles weren’t working the way they were supposed to. However, they had some other potentially interesting interactions with the immune system, so perhaps something new will come of it.
For sure government funding is driving innovation in this field. I am a cynic, though, and feel that everyone is hopping on the bandwagon because “Nanotechnology will save us all”, and wonder if it isn’t just like “Stem cells will save us all” , “Genomics will save us all”, and “Recombinant DNA will save us all”, and so on – go back to the 80’s and it was “Monoclonal antibodies will save us all”.
None of these things has yet cured cancer, or even the flu, for that matter. However, the accumulated knowlege has made life better, so in the long run, it’s worth it.
The super blockbuster discovery is going to come from somewhere we never imagined. It’s always like that.
And really wildly out-there innovative thinking is rarely rewarded with a grant, especially in hard times like these.
I’m not surprised about Rice, Smalley was HUGE in the field.
But good point. It is amazing how much science is influenced by trend.
“So save us all!”