Nanotechnology provides researchers with the opportunity to study and manipulate macromolecules in real time and during the earliest stages of cancer progression. Nanotechnology can provide rapid and sensitive detection of cancer-related molecules, enabling scientists to detect molecular changes even when they occur only in a small percentage of cells. Nanotechnology also has the potential to generate entirely novel and highly effective therapeutic agents.Ultimately and uniquely, the use of nanoscale materials for cancer, comes down to its ability to be readily functionalized and easily tuned; its ability to deliver and / or act as the therapeutic, diagnostic, or both; and its ability to passively accumulate at the tumor site, to be actively targeted to cancer cells, and to be delivered across traditional biological barriers in the body such as dense stromal tissue of the pancreas or the blood-brain barrier that highly regulates delivery of biomolecules to / from, our central nervous system.