Nanoinformatics: a new area of research in nanomedicine

Abstract

Over a decade ago, nanotechnologists began research on applications of nanomaterials for medicine. This research has revealed a wide range of different challenges, as well as many opportunities. Some of these challenges are strongly related to informatics issues, dealing, for instance, with the management and integration of heterogeneous information, defining nomenclatures, taxonomies and classifications for various types of nanomaterials, and research on new modeling and simulation techniques for nanoparticles. Nanoinformatics has recently emerged in the USA and Europe to address these issues. In this paper, we present a review of nanoinformatics, describing its origins, the problems it addresses, areas of interest, and examples of current research initiatives and informatics resources. We suggest that nanoinformatics could accelerate research and development in nanomedicine, as has occurred in the past in other fields. For instance, biomedical informatics served as a fundamental catalyst for the Human Genome Project, and other genomic and –omics projects, as well as the translational efforts that link resulting molecular-level research to clinical problems and findings.

Keywords:

• biomedical informatics
• nanomedicine
• nanotoxicology
• ontologies
• electronic health records

Acknowledgments

The work of the authors in this area of research has been partially funded by the European Commission (the ACTION-Grid Support Action, FP7-224176), and the INBIOMEDvision (Coordination and Support Action, FP7-270107), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FIS/AES PS09/00069, RETICS COMBIOMED RD07/0067/0006, Ibero-NBIC CYTED 209RT0366), the Consejo Social of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, the Comunidad de Madrid and the National Center for Research Resources/National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (Public Health Services research grants UL1-RR025764 and UL1RR025764-02S2). This project has also been funded in part with federal funds from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, under contract HHSN261200800001E. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Disclosure

Other than the funding outlined in the Acknowledgments, the authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.