Women Lead Advances in Nanomedicine, Sensors and Nanofluidics in New Research Volume

On 11 February 2026, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, researchers publishing in Frontiers in Nanotechnology marked the occasion with the release of “Women in nanotechnology volume II,” a curated Research Topic that gathers two reviews and four original research articles, every one of them led by women as senior and corresponding authors. The collection, edited by Ilika Ghosh of the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, Benedetta Marmiroli of Graz University of Technology, Vania Silverio of INESC Microsistemas e Nanotecnologias and Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, and Zeinab Ramezani of the University of Miami, is deliberately interdisciplinary. Its six papers span single-cell biophysics, bone regeneration, environmental sensing, spectroscopy, metrology and plant biotechnology, and together they illustrate both the technical depth and the breadth of women’s work across nanotechnology today.

The editorial accompanying the volume situates the science within a persistent statistical imbalance. In 2026, the number of women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics is the highest ever recorded, yet women still account for roughly one-third of researchers globally, according to UNESCO figures cited by the editors. The Nobel record is starker still: from 1901 to 2025, only 68 Nobel Prizes went to women, about 6.8 percent of all prizes across every category, and only 26 individual women have ever won the prize in Physics, Chemistry, or Physiology or Medicine. Within nanoscience specifically, women make up approximately 14 to 30 percent of professionals, with representation fluctuating by career level, sector, and whether a subfield leans toward the physical sciences or the biomedical and life sciences.

The imbalance extends into the upper ranks of academia. Among university research teams examined by Ross and colleagues in 2022, women constituted approximately 60 percent of research staff but only 35 percent of faculty members. A Nature Index analysis of author gender ratios in 2025 found that women accounted for 41 percent of total author positions on health sciences papers but only 31 percent of last-author positions, meaning male scientists remain more likely to occupy the senior corresponding author role. The editors attribute this disparity to family responsibilities, barriers to work-life balance, and related factors. Against that backdrop, the volume’s insistence on women-led senior authorship is itself a statement about where the field’s leadership is heading.

The first original research contribution, by Moretti and colleagues, addresses a question fundamental to aging and cancer: how cells adhere to the extracellular matrix. The team combined atomic force microscopy with ultrashort peptide hydrogels bearing biofunctional motifs, probing single-cell adhesion mechanics in real time in what the editors describe as the first such use of peptide-coated AFM tips. Comparing young versus senescent fibroblasts, healthy versus cancer-associated stromal cells, and neuroblastoma cells, they found that healthy cells engage specifically with the biofunctional motifs, while senescent and cancer cells rely more heavily on non-specific electrostatic interactions. That mechanistic distinction positions AFM as a potential diagnostic tool for distinguishing cell states, though the technique remains at the research stage rather than the clinic.

Bone disease is the focus of the second study. Osteoporosis affects more than 200 million people worldwide, a burden set to grow as populations age, and Palomeque Chávez and colleagues set out to optimize a one-pot sol-gel synthesis of strontium- and calcium-doped silica nanoparticles for osteogenic therapy. Their key finding is that solvent choice controls nanoparticle size, structure and bioactivity. At non-toxic concentrations, both formulations supported osteogenic differentiation and antioxidant activity in pre-osteoblasts, with smaller particles produced in an ethanol/water system showing enhanced biocompatibility. Strontium doping added a dual benefit, promoting bone formation while scavenging reactive oxygen species. The editors point to the work as a tunable platform for next-generation osteoporosis therapies, a characterization that reflects the preclinical nature of the cell-culture findings.

Environmental monitoring is the theme of the third paper. Morrone and colleagues developed UV-responsive, multilayered mesoporous photonic crystals made of alternating zirconia and silica layers, exploiting each oxide’s distinct chemistry to functionalize each layer selectively with different organic groups. This layer-specific modification reduces water condensation within the mesopores, allowing the crystals to selectively detect non-polar organic vapors even in humid conditions, a long-standing challenge for vapor sensing. The result demonstrates that chemical modification applied layer by layer can tune a photonic structure’s responsiveness to specific analytes, an approach the editors highlight as a route toward more robust vapor sensors and photonic nose arrays for detecting hazardous airborne contaminants.

The volume’s first review, by Sartori and Marmiroli, tackles a sensitivity problem in analytical chemistry. Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy overcomes the low sensitivity of traditional Raman spectroscopy and can push detection down to the single-molecule level, but producing substrates that are simultaneously sensitive, reproducible and cost-effective remains difficult. The authors surveyed 21 studies published between 2020 and 2025 on functionalizing cellulose substrates for SERS sensors, reporting enhancement factors as high as 10 to the 11th power. Their synthesis shows that appropriate pretreatment of cellulose yields a more homogeneous plasmonic surface, improving both sensitivity and reproducibility, and they catalog strategies using metallic and non-metallic nanostructures, including metal oxides and metal-organic frameworks.

The same review looks forward to applications and obstacles. Sartori and Marmiroli discuss the potential of cellulose-based SERS sensors for integration into wearable patches, point-of-care diagnostics and environmental monitoring devices, while identifying key challenges around scalability, durability and the analysis of complex real-world matrices. They also note the promising role of machine learning in improving analyte identification in messy samples, an increasingly common theme at the intersection of nanosensing and data science. As a review, the paper maps the state of the art rather than reporting a single new device, but its systematic comparison of substrate pretreatments gives researchers a practical guide to where the reproducibility gains actually come from.

Precision measurement, often overlooked in popular accounts of nanotechnology, forms the volume’s fifth contribution. Reliable flow measurement at the micro- and nanoflow scale is critical for healthcare and microfluidics, yet calibration methods often lack standardization. Batista and colleagues extended the gravimetric method down to 10 microliters per hour and developed three optical techniques, interferometric, pendant drop and front tracking, achieving measurements as low as 1.6 nanoliters per minute with uncertainty under 2 percent, with the interferometric approach performing best. The work was validated through internal and EURAMET interlaboratory studies and directly informed EURAMET calibration guidelines for drug delivery and infusion devices, giving it a clear and immediate implication for patient safety in clinical settings.

The final paper turns to agriculture. Conventional plant genetic transformation methods are limited by species specificity, low efficiency and tissue damage, and Shivashakarappa and colleagues review nanoparticle-mediated gene delivery approaches, including infiltration, biolistics, magnetofection, ultrasound and spraying. They highlight spraying as a promising non-invasive route for large-scale delivery of double-stranded and small interfering RNA, while noting that delivery of CRISPR constructs in plants remains underexplored. The authors call for less cytotoxic carriers, such as low molecular weight polyethyleneimine, chitosan and arginine, over high molecular weight polyethyleneimine, and for environmental risk assessment as the technology scales up, given potential impacts on soil bacteria essential to plant growth. Taken together, the six papers, and the editorial framing around them, make the case that recognizing women’s contributions in nanotechnology is not a matter of ceremony but of visibility for work that already spans the clinic, the environment and the food supply, and that the journals hosting such volumes play a fundamental role in inspiring the field’s future leaders.

Subject of Research: Women-led nanotechnology research spanning nanomedicine, sensors, metrology and plant biotechnology

Article Title: Editorial: Women in nanotechnology volume II

Article References: Ghosh, I., Marmiroli, B., Silverio, V., & Ramezani, Z. (2026). Editorial: Women in nanotechnology volume II. Frontiers in Nanotechnology, 8, Article 2016855. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnano.2026.2016855

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fnano.2026.2016855

Keywords: women in STEM, nanotechnology, nanomedicine, atomic force microscopy, osteoporosis, photonic crystals, SERS, nanofluidics, gene delivery, nanoparticle synthesis, biosensors, gender equity in science