The U.S. National Cancer Institute announced a new five-year plan on Monday to develop the use of tiny tools to fight cancer, saying nanotechnology just might provide the edge needed to defeat the disease.

Nanotechnology - the design and use of devices the size of molecules - offers new ways to detect, diagnose and to treat cancer at its earliest stages and with minimal side effects, experts told reporters.

“If we can do that then we can eliminate this disease,” said Richard Smalley, a professor of nanotechnology at Rice University in Houston.

The $144.5 million plan will include the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, an initiative to team up researchers, physicians, companies and not-for-profit groups to develop nanotechnology products for use in diagnosing and treating cancer.

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Medicine already employs molecular size devices in the shape of natural and artificially engineered proteins such as antibodies. “What’s new is we can build new nano-objects that never existed before,” Smalley said.

These can be coated with homing devices such as antibodies, artificial or natural, that will find cancerous cells. They could also carry drugs to kill the cells or imaging agents to help detect cancer, said Dr. Mauro Ferrari, a special adviser to the NCI and a professor of biomedical engineering at Ohio State University.

“By doing this on a very small scale there will be different effects,” said Dr. Samuel Wickline of Washington University in St. Louis.

“The possibilities are enormous for finding very small cancers far earlier than ever before and treating them with powerful drugs at the tumor site alone, while at the same time reducing any harmful side effects. This initiative will allow us to explore using this technology to its full potential.”

A drug delivered using a nano-device, for example, could precisely target cancer cells without affecting healthy cells - the way chemotherapy and radiation do now. Drugs based on monoclonal antibodies - engineered immune system proteins - do this but the science could be expanded, the experts said.

And liposomes, tiny capsules used to carry drugs, can be regarded as a “first generation” of nano-scale drug delivery devices.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting deputy commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration, said her agency was gearing up to approve new nano-devices in medicine.

“We see potential for novel drug delivery,” Woodcock said. But any new product will have to pass the standard hurdles of proving safe, effective and of being mass-produced.

There will also be some new bureaucratic hoops to pass through, Woodcock predicted, especially if the minuscule new products might be categorized both as devices and as drugs or diagnostics.

NCI Deputy Director Anna Barker said the plan would include $90 million for at least five new centers of excellence over five years, $16 million for training and $38 million in grants to researchers for specific projects.