The global market for conventional woven textiles is ∼ the U.S. $1.2 trillion with applications in a diverse range of products from automobile to aerospace and consumer goods, with 8% for medical devices. In conventional textile technology, threads are developed from micron size filaments/fibers. Nanotextiles, defined as textiles developed from nano-threads, contain bundles of thousands of fibers in the nanoscale range. The invention of nanotextiles could unfold new frontiers in the coming decade with properties significantly different from conventional textiles. Increased surface area and enhanced mechanical properties of nano-fiber-based textiles overrode the conventional textile-based products. Despite the great demand for nanotextiles, a technology gap exists in the development and large-scale production of nanoscale threads and textiles.

Globally, millions of patients are affected by heart attack or limb gangrene/amputation due to blockage of small diameter (< 5 mm) blood vessels. After more than half a century of research, the available surgical treatment to bypass the blocked vessel is based on synthetic vascular grafts that provide only sub-optimal benefits. More than 50% of the synthetic grafts fail at one year due to poor healing, leading to excessive inflammation and blood clot. Another reason attributed to the failure is the mismatch in mechanical properties of the commercial graft with the native blood vessel. Hence, there is a critical clinical unmet need for more effective small-diameter arterial conduits that promote healing and rapid tissue regeneration integrated with the native blood vessel.

Coronary stents are mesh tubes placed in arteries to prevent their collapse and maintain continuous blood supply to heart muscles. Despite the clinical success of metal stents based on stainless steel and cobalt-chromium, they continue to present a risk of blood clots and overgrowth of undesirable smooth muscle cells, resulting in vessel blockage in the long run. The concept of drug-eluting stents was introduced to circumvent these problems; wherein metallic stents were coated with a polymer loaded with drugs such as sirolimus and paclitaxel. These drugs prevent the excessive growth of smooth muscle cells and improve clinical efficacy. However, the drugs released from the polymer-coated stent delay healing by averting endothelial cells' growth. These cells play a protective role by preventing blood clot formation. Additionally, the polymeric coatings on stents were susceptible to nonuniformities on the surfaces and delamination, which affect their long-term stability and integrity. Therefore, there is an unmet need to develop a new type of stent to address these problems.

Nanoparticles hold significant potential to advance the therapeutic outcomes and prognosis for various fatal disease states. In recent years, nanomedicine has revolutionized the cancer therapeutics field with the advent of targeted drug delivery carriers to improve the bioavailability of chemo drugs within the tumor tissues and reduce off-target effects. The size and surface properties of the nanocarriers can be tuned to accommodate drug molecules with different physicochemical properties and improve the uptake efficiency by the target cells. Additionally, engineered nanoparticles can function as a sheath to prevent the degradation of protein and gene-based therapeutics from harsh physiological conditions. Surface functionalization of nanoparticles can overcome the cellular barriers, a crucial hurdle in drug delivery, specifically towards the brain, lung, and intestine. Despite the widespread research on nano-mediated therapeutics, there is still a breach in the clinical translation of the nanoparticle-based drug delivery approaches.