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It can be seen in [link] that at the onset during the period of 2002 – 2004 Swansea made up 22% of Welsh and 25% of the United Kingdom publications in “nano” interestingly at the same period of time Swansea University was awarded funding for the Multidisciplinary Nanotechnology Centre. It can also be seen that over the following periods 2004-2006 and 2006-2008 that the journal article outputs in Swansea, Wales and the United Kingdom increased, identifying “nano” as a research growth area. Also within the following period of and 2008 – present there was an increase in the journal article outputs for Wales and the United Kingdom.

In 2004 the NAno and MIcro -TEC SMEs in Integrate Projects and Networks of Excellence (NAoMITEC) was funded by the European Commission with the main objective of the promotion and participation of SMEs in the new instruments of Framework Project 6 with attention focusing on projects referring to nano and micro technologies and their application in key industrial sectors of ICT, Health Care, Aerospace, Transport and Environment.

In 2006 NAoMITEC put out two reports investigated the strengths of micro– and nanotechnology in Europe in a sector specific and country specific breakdown. Within the Country Report and Sector Report: Health it was seen that the University of Wales Swansea Multidisciplinary Nanotechnology Centre were capitalising and taking the lead in Wales.

The NAoMITEC reports highlight current availabilities and capacities within the European Union and identified that nanotechnology opens-up a multitude of new and improved applications in the biomedical field and that these applications would be for diagnostic or therapeutic use. They also highlighted that nanotechnology applications would also cover areas such as tissue engineering, biocompatible implants or bioactive materials. The report also identified low hanging fruit that could be quick wins within current trends as being; further biochip miniaturisation, advances of lab-on-chip applications and for longer periods of imaging techniques enhanced by nano-enabled contrast agents.

The reports went on to say that within previous years many of the start-up companies and SMEs set to work on developing ambitious new products. Yet many of them lack the funds that are needed for the lengthy phase of developments, demonstration and deployment. Therefore SMEs were recommended to concentrate on Research and Technical Development projects as a short-term step promising a sort of early return on investment.

Following a report by the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee on Nanotechnologies and Food, January 2009, on nano and food safety, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills were asked to respond. In March 2007 the Medical Research Council (MRC) issued a ‘highlight notice’ to encourage applications in nanotoxicology with the aim to inform policy development. The notice proved successful in stimulating a significant increase of applications and that since its launch five awards had been made at a total level of approximately £3 million. The research was focused on better understand the uptake of nanoparticles into cells and the functional consequences including oxidative stress, inflammatory response, cell death and genotoxicity, by linking this information to the physical and chemical characteristics of nanoparticles, predictive models for nanoparticle toxicity can be developed that will help risk assessment.