Multimodal Atomic Force Microscopy for Nanomedicine: Biological Nanoimaging, Nanomechanics and Nanodevices R. Lal*, S. Ramachandran*, F.T. Arce*, M. Allen*, A.P. Quist # *Center for Nanomedicine and Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, 5841 S Maryland Ave, Rm I-503C; Chicago, IL 60637 # RC Nano Corp., 2210 Midwest Rd, Suite 100, Oak Brook, IL 60523 Nanomedicine is intricately linked to nanoscience and technology and refers to medical interventions at (sub-) molecular level. Nanomedicine spans all areas of human health management and could be grouped in three broadly defined subsets: nanodiagnostics, nanotherapeutics and nanodevices. Their relevance include to a wide range of subjects, including, a) help understand basic cause(s) of the disease by examining roles of cell and tissue interactions with environmental perturbations, both internal as well as external, b) help diagnose diseases using nanoscale sensors and devices, c) help design therapeutics and drugs as well as efficient carriers for the delivery of dugs and therapeutics, and d) help design nano/micro-electrical & mechanical stimulations for maintaining various body activity. Nano-bioengineering, an important component of nanoscience and technology concerns learning about the physicochemical properties of biomacromolecules, cells and sub-cellular structures, investigates the molecular machines and their interactions with other machines and its environment, and creates tissues/organs from understanding biological systems at most basic molecular scale. The aim of my presentation will be to discuss the contribution of scanning probe techniques, especially atomic force microscopy in Nanomedicine. Key salient features of atomic force microscopy that set it apart from other comparable microscopies, include a) its potential for atomic scale structural and physical properties study of live biological systems, b) its open architecture that allows its integration with a range of other techniques, tools and operating environments ranging from nano and microfluidics to normal petri dishes, and c) its application for creating Nanodevices based on Biomimetics. Specific areas that I will discuss are mostly from work done in my laboratory, although complementary and relevant work from other laboratories will also be discussed. This includes: • Development of Integrated multimodal "SMART AFM" and its application that has provided new paradigms for our understanding of protein misfolding diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes and from our work on hemichannels that relate to diseases arising from environmental and life choices. The integrated multimodal AFM that we have developed over a years of collaborative research combines AFM, Optical Tweezers, double chamber electrical recording, patented chip-based TIRF and FRET and microfluidics and provides versatile nanotools for multiscale (nano-to-system), multimodal (structural, physicochemical properties and functional) and multidimensional study of living biological systems. • Development of integrated cantilevered microarrays, TIRF, microfluidics and nanoelectronics-based parallel sensors. This allows high throughput and rapid Microsc Microanal 14(Suppl 2), 2008 Copyright 2008 Microscopy Society of America 950 DOI: 10.1017/S1431927608085735