The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week released draft guidance designed to move the process forward of providing its regulated industries with greater certainty about the use of nanotechnology (which generally involves materials made up of particles that are one billionth of a meter in size). The guidance outlines the agency’s current view on certain issues about regulated products that contain nanomaterials or involve the application of nanotechnology.

FDA has not to date established regulatory definitions of “nanotechnology,” “nanoscale” or related terms. The term is perhaps most commonly used to refer to the engineering (i.e., deliberate manipulation, manufacture or selection) of materials that have at least one dimension in the size range of approximately 1 to 100 nanometers. For example, the National Nanotechnology Initiative Program defines nanotechnology as the understanding and control of matter at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. Other factors such as function, shape, charge, the ratio of surface area to volume, or other physical or chemical properties have also been mentioned in various published definitions.

Our readers know that nanotechnology, the science involving manipulation of materials on an atomic or molecular scale, is an emerging technology with a broad range of potential applications, such as increasing bio-availability of a drug, improving food packaging, and in cosmetics.