How is nanotechnology being used in medicine?

The answer

Medical nanotechnology operates at scales between 1 and 100 nanometers - for reference, a human hair is about 80,000 nm wide. Nanoparticles can be engineered to deliver drugs directly to cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue, dramatically reducing side effects. The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine uses lipid nanoparticles to protect and deliver fragile mRNA into human cells. Researchers are also developing nanosensors that detect disease biomarkers at extremely low concentrations, gold nanoparticles that heat and destroy tumors, and nanorobots that could one day navigate the bloodstream to perform targeted repairs.