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I'm sure that you have someone that has cancer

and you have seen that person going through chemotherapy.

It's awful.

Or, hopefully you haven't seen yet

people suffering of Alzheimer

Parkinson

AIDS

There's plenty of problems,

actual problems affecting the human health.

Nanotechnology has the power to change this.

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[Sonia on phones] So we really need to do something.

They're not effective anymore.

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Imagine that we can divide one meter in one billion part.

One of these part is an nanometer.

Nanotechnology is the science that study

the material that are a few nanometers.

For example, viruses are a hundred nanometers.

DNA, two nanometers

and atoms are like 1.1 nanometers.

So for example, you can see your hair, okay?

These guys, 80,000 nanometers.

Nanotechnology not allowed us to visualize small things

but actually to create things.

We can create nanomaterials from bigger structures

or by putting atom by atom together.

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So one of the things that I have in the lab

is these nanoparticles of metal nanoparticles, okay?

So these metal nanoparticles kills the bacteria, okay?

In a very, very efficient way.

So imagine that you can have these nanoparticles

in a surface in all the air conditioners, for example.

(Sonia talking in meeting)

Okay, but think about it.

Not everything has to be internal.

We don't have to always take things.

How many times you fly in a plane and you get sick

because one person is sick?

All the time.

So imagine that you have these nanoparticles

all around the air purification system

so every time that something goes with a bacteria or virus

get in contact with these nanoparticles,

metallic nanoparticles, it will explode

so it will be there but it will be nontoxic,

it will not infect other people.

This nanoparticle kill bacteria very effectively.

So what we have here is a new generation of antibiotics,

an antiobiotic that is metallic

and because it's metallic, it will never confer resistance.

Bacteria will never be resistant to these antibiotics.

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I'm thinking to actually apply it on planes, obviously

but more important, at hospitals.

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However, I still don't know

if the human body will accept it

so we're trying to make something different,

change the way of thinking what is an antibiotic.

I'd love to know how nanotechnologists feel about

the persistent and systemic toxicity questions

that are constantly raised and what studies--

The problem that we have is that the risk

on nanotechnology is really high right now

so we have a strong regulation of the things

that we can or we cannot do.

And this needs to be changed, completely.

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