If you examine who is delivering the majority of venture capital returns in nanotechnology, it is application-oriented life sciences companies, says analyst firm Lux Research. Yet venture capitalists are consistently providing more funding to companies in other areas.

…That's because "gas prices and global warming make the crises in energy and the environment really visible," Grose says. However, he notes, the need for beneficial nanomedicine remains strong.

"So there are great investment opportunities -- and sketchy ones -- in both areas, and you really need to examine each company's scientific value closely to find value."

That's just one of the findings in Lux Research's new report, "How Venture Capitalists Are Misplaying Nanotech." The report also notes...

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The drug, called lodamin, was improved in one of the last experiments overseen by Dr. Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher who died in January. Folkman pioneered the idea of angiogenesis therapy -- starving tumors by preventing them from growing blood supplies.

…Efforts to improve it did not work well. Then Benny and colleagues tried nanotechnology, attaching two "pom-pom"-shaped polymers to TNP-470, protecting it from stomach acid.

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Well, come clean he has.  And the revelation: Benny really is silver-free—uncertainty over risks, regulation and public acceptance led to the manufacturer to find a non-nano alternative.

In last Friday’s broadcast of Living On Earth—a U.S. weekly environmental news and information radio program—reporter Jeff Young interviewed Roy Sharda, a partner in Pure Plushy; the Chicago-based company that makes Benny.  According to Sharda, “We have used nano silver in the past there's a lot of speculation as to how much nano silver technology is accepted. Anytime you see controversy you try to sort of avoid it.”

Pure Plushy stopped using nano-silver because there were just too many questions about the material, how people will respond to its use, and how the government might regulate it.

So in the “case of the disappearing nanoparticles,” they really did disappear; to be replaced by a (presumably) more conventional EPA-approved antimicrobial.

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Michael Taylor, of the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Service, said that his report, Assuring the Safety of Nanomaterials in Food Packaging: The Regulatory Process and Key Issues synthesizes eight months of meetings between government, industry and public interest agencies.

Taylor told FoodProductionDaily.com that the trigger for the study was the fact that the food packaging industry, food companies and consumers all share an interest in ensuring that any safety questions are identified, carefully evaluated and resolved before packaging using nanomaterials is brought onto the market.

Michael Taylor, of the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Service, said that his report, Assuring the Safety of Nanomaterials in Food Packaging: The Regulatory Process and Key Issues synthesizes eight months of meetings between government, industry and public interest agencies.

Taylor told FoodProductionDaily.com that the trigger for the study was the fact that the food packaging industry, food companies and consumers all share an interest in ensuring that any safety questions are identified, carefully evaluated and resolved before packaging using nanomaterials is brought onto the market.

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But the science of the small (as nanotechnology often is described) is throwing up vast, new challenges for regulators.

Everyone from health and environmental campaigners to business leaders agrees that reconciling the pros and cons of nanotechnology is going to be hard work, and that a full understanding of the properties of these materials could take years to establish.

Where they disagree is what to do now.

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The food-packaging industry, food companies and consumers all share an interest in ensuring that any possible safety questions are identified and are carefully evaluated and resolved before marketing packaging materials that contain ENMs, according to the report authored by former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy official Michael R. Taylor.

The PEN-GMA report, Assuring the Safety of Nanomaterials in Food Packaging: The Regulatory Process and Key Issues, was a result of an effort by experts from government, industry and the public interest community to examine the path of a number of hypothetical nanotechnology food packaging applications through the current regulatory system. The regulatory system for food packaging is scientifically rigorous and extraordinarily complex, both legally and scientifically. This first-of-its-kind analysis provides a better understanding of the potential regulatory issues on the horizon for nanotechnology-enabled packaging - an advantage for industry, consumers and regulatory agencies such as FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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Several manufacturers are incorporating nano-sized particles of silver into socks to kill bacteria that cause odor. But does the silver stay in the socks? And what happens to it if it washes out? Arizona State University's Troy Benn tested a variety of socks containing nanosilver. He wrote in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that some socks released nearly all of their nanosilver within the first four washings.

Surprisingly, says Benn, "Others that contained a lot of silver in the sock didn't release any silver that was detectable." He says there must be some differences in the manufacturing process. "We assume there is a way to contain the silver within sock because we did see a large difference between different manufacturers of the sock material."

For someone with diabetes or a soldier in the field, says Benn, a sock that kills microbes and prevents infection could be critical, but for other people, "The question is whether the benefits really outweigh the potential environmental cost."

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Before that happens, here's where it'll turn up first. Medicine and health. You name it – molecular analysis of samples, micro-surgery, drug production, monitoring implants, all are huge markets waiting for the increase in efficiencies, better procedures and plain old cost savings that'll happen when we better engineer tiny things that interact with our bodies. For example: tiny robots small enough to fit in a particular size of syringe that can be powered, controlled and monitored from outside, and which do real surgery on retinas. Why that size of syringe? That's the largest that can inject into the eye without requiring sutures.

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But the applications of nanotechnology could also be a boon for developing new ways to cut waste, clean up pollution and improve the energy efficiency of entire industries.

… Ensuring public acceptance of nanotechnologies could be particularly important in Europe, which has pledged to keep its economy humming while finding ways of reducing planet-warming emissions by as much as 30 percent by 2020. And even as scientists and environmentalists warn of the dangers of nanotechnology, authorities like the European Commission are pledging support for a wide range of projects.

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The science of the very small could pose some very big problems for state and local agencies, according to a new report by Wisconsin researchers.

Data gaps in our understanding of the burgeoning field of nanotechnology are forcing unprepared state and local governments to bear the brunt of regulating the new technology's potentially hazardous risks, the authors conclude.

The new report makes clear that "in the absence of clear guidelines from Washington, the states are being left to fill in the gaps," said Andrew Maynard, the chief science adviser for emerging nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, who was not involved in the research.

"Most of the discussion so far has been at the federal level," said Maria Powell, an environmental scientist at the University of Madison-Wisconsin's Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center, who led the study. "But what hasn't been discussed is the fact that federal regulations charge a lot of key statutes to the states. So, we should really be looking at what's happening at the state level . . . and overall, the states aren't really prepared."

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In its report, "The National Nanotechnology Initiative: Second Assessment and Recommendations of the National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel," the PCAST panel states, "The NNI continues to be a highly successful model for an interagency program; it is well organized and well managed ... [and its] approach for addressing [SH&E] research under the NNI is sound."

The panel recommends that the federal government help support the development of a battery of tests or "minimum data sets" of physical and chemical properties of nanomaterials that researchers would be expected to conduct, and calls for wide distribution of nonproprietary information about the properties of nanomaterials. In addition, the panel takes the stance that calls to establish a separate agency or office devoted to nanotechnology SH&E research are misguided and may actually reduce research on beneficial applications and on risk.

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Established in 200, the National Nanotechnology Initiative coordinates federal research and development. Over the past years, NNI has tried to keep pace with the growing field of nanotechnology, but it has struggled to set up a strategy to guide R&D and, specifically, to ensure that key environmental, health, and safety (EHS) research is being done.

To help NNI better manage its responsibilities, Congress is reevaluating and revising the law that governs it. On June 5, by an overwhelming vote of 407 to 6, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5940, the National Nanotechnology Initiative Amendments Act of 2008. Industry and environmental groups alike praised the bill, which emphasizes the need for EHS research.

…For example, the legislation would create a public database of nanotech EHS research conducted by all of the 25 federal agencies involved in NNI. Currently, the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office gathers such information, but reliability of the dataset is less than clear.

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That exuberant motto, used by an executive at a trade group for nanotech entrepreneurs, reflects the buoyant enthusiasm for nanotechnology in some business and scientific circles.

Part of the slogan is indisputably true: nanotechnology -- which involves creating and manipulating common substances at the scale of the nanometer, or one billionth of a meter -- is invisible to the human eye.

But the rest of the motto is open for debate. Nanotech does hold clean and green potential, especially for supplying cheap renewable energy and safe drinking water. But nanomaterials also pose possible serious risks to the environment and human health -- risks that researchers have barely begun to probe, and regulators have barely begun to regulate.

What's more, the potential damage could take years or even decades to surface. So these tiny particles could soon become the next big thing -- only to turn into the next big disaster.

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