NanoApps CEO Frank Boehm Follows the Beat of Nanomedicine

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What is nanotechnology?

The concept of nanotechnology has been around for some time now. The use of nanocomposites dates back to ancient times; to the Damascans who employed nanoparticles in forging remarkably strong and sharp swords, and the Romans who crafted iridescent goblets. Frank Boehm, CEO of Vancouver, Canada based NanoApps Medical, Inc. aims to bring the promise of nanotechnology to the medical field. After being a rock/pop musician touring on the road for thirteen years, and then a mechanical designer for seventeen years, Boehm serendipitously struck a new chord with nanomedicine. He has authored one book to date: Nanomedical Device and Systems Design: Challenges, Possibilities, Visions, which was published in 2013 with CRC Press, and is now working to generate two more books in tandem over the next two years, again with CRC Press, that explore his expanded vision for nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine, and AI: Toward the Dream of Global Health Care Equivalency and a pivotal nanotechnology that will likely enable it: Molecular Manufacturing: Emergence of the Grand Equalizer.

Boehm explained what nanotechnology and nanomedicine are in a phone interview, “Nanotechnology is the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular levels to make useful devices and materials, etc. These nanomaterials are remarkable due to their high surface area, or surface area to volume ratio. They exhibit unique properties, [for example, both] electronically [and] mechanically… So nanomedicine is one off shoot of nanotechnology, but you are building devices that are really small. Most diseases emerge at the molecular level, so you would be working at that level… That’s the beauty of it, because you’re not being very invasive…” Boehm sees virtually limitless potential for nanotechnology in the medical industry.

In particular, he sees critical synergies with other technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI). Boehm said, “I think [these] synergies [between nanotechnology, nanomedicine, and AI]… may give rise to what I refer to as Global Health Care Equivalency (GHCE). This means that anybody on the planet would have equivalent access to high quality nanomedicine based healthcare no matter where they happen to reside, or under what conditions they live… Molecular Manufacturing (MM) has been touted for the last few decades [see Drexler and Freitas] as an advanced fabrication platform. It would enable individuals to fabricate virtually any type of consumer product in their own home, which I refer to as ‘Factory-at-Home’ systems. These systems might be the progeny of today’s 3D printers, but instead of using polymers and powders, you would be using atoms and molecules. You could make your toothbrush, your food, you could make little [high efficiency] solar panels, or you could make sophisticated nanomedical devices, as prescribed by your physician… I think this will take place in the next ten to thirty years.”

To start off, Boehm is thinking of developing his own non-invasive nanomedical device, “Right now we’re trying to secure funding for a nanobiosensor that would detect Zika, Ebola and Malaria, using saliva samples,” he said.

Nanotechnology may have the capacity to significantly change the field of medicine, but are there drawbacks? When using nanotechnology, foreign nanomaterials would be entering the body; hence, could they be rejected by the body? Is this a problem? Boehm’s response to this situation was two-fold, “With any new technology, there have to be stringent protocols put in place, especially before we introduce anything into the body. [My company is] starting off with non invasive devices. So, the saliva samples are pretty non invasive. Another avenue is detecting disease through breath samples with nanosensors  based on certain nanomaterials that would sense biomarkers in the breath that are associated with certain diseases.”

Beyond non-invasive methods of nanomedicine, there may be a strong future for nanotechnology in the medical field with imperceptible devices that may reside temporarily within the body. “There will likely come a day where there will be no more invasive surgery, where scalpels will be obsolete, because you will have legions of these sophisticated nanodevices that will be programmed with quantum computers inside them,” said Boehm,“They will be programmed to go to wherever problem is in the body, like a military mission basically, and ingress into the body; go to a tumor and destroy it. Or if something is wrong with your liver, they will go to fix that, and then leave the body again.”

Will nanotechnology be a significant boon to medicine? With a field that is so rapidly and constantly changing, only time will tell. Even after his musical stint, Boehm may have found the right tune after all.