European network on applications of Atomic Force Microscopy to NanoMedicine and Life Sciences acronym: AFM4NanoMed&Bio

The main objective of the COST Action is to further develop and transfer the biophysical achievements of Atomic Force Microscopy to NanoMedicine and clinical research.

 Atomic Force Microscopy AFM) has become an enabling platform in nanotechnology. It has provided a great impact in Life Sciences and is becoming indispensable also in NanoMedicine. NanoMedicine is an emerging area, which focuses in imaging, early diagnosis, pathological tissue analysis, and drug delivery. Although significant efforts have been devoted to enhancing the performance of AFM, full exploitation of its capabilities has been hampered by the uncoordinated relationship between researchers active in fundamental sciences, and users in the biomedical field. In addition, due to the swift development of AFM, Life science scientists depend on collaboration with experts in physical sciences to utilize the power of AFM instrumentation. This COST Action aims at bundling the expertise of the most active European AFM laboratories with the biomedical scientific environment into a network to foster further enhancement of AFM instrumental development, and explore and support its extensive applications in Life Sciences and Nanomedicine. Similar to the evolution of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance technique, which has evolved to enabling Magnetic Resonance Imaging and its widely use in clinical diagnosis, AFM holds the promise to perform the same transition. The result of this COST Action would be to shorten the transition period.