Nanosystems for Molecular Medicine

There is currently an intense exploration to determine patterns of gene expression that encode for normal biological processes such as cell replication and signal transduction and to understand disease that results from alterations in normal gene expression. Such alternations can result from environmental factors, hereditary defects, developmental errors and aging. In the future, symptom-based descriptions of disease will give way to a molecular mechanistic nomenclature with treatments aimed at molecular modification of alterations that produce cell phenotypes of disease. Out of this research will arise molecular diagnostics and molecular therapeutic treatments.

Scientists at the CNSI approach molecules, cells, organs and organisms at the nanoscale, using molecular techniques to probe, image, and correct errors that cause disease. At the CNSI, scientists are developing and using technologies to examine how proteins function within cellular systems. They examine how DNA-coded instructions from the genome are transcribed and translated into protein-based instructions for construction and regulation of cellular processes, and how cells differentiate into the superstructure of organ systems and whole organisms -- including humans. Molecular probes are used to study basic biology and the resultant knowledge will lead to the development of molecular tools for molecular diagnostics and therapeutics.