One of the newest materials that has been used for cell phones is now being tested for other uses, including for internal medical delivery, and is being backed by billions from the European government.

Graphene is a carbon material, one atom thick, and is being tested to see if it is safe to use in the human body, Bloomberg reports.

"We're trying to design vehicles that you can inject in the bloodstream or eyeball or spinal cord or in the brain, to try and get to a particular diseased cell population, so you don't create collateral damage," said Kostas Kostarelos, a professor at the University of Manchester in the U.K.

Graphene would be used to make tiny drones to deliver the medicine, reminiscent of "Fantastic Voyage," a 1966 science-fiction movie that takes place inside the human body, Bloomberg reports.

In the consumer tech world, graphene is already making strides, as a flexible material that can be used for touchscreens on mobile devices, as is being developed by Samsung, or as a replacement for silicone in microchips.

As a result of its promising future, the European Union has created a $1-billion euro fund, called the Graphene Flagship, which will be contributed to over a period of 10 years in hopes that the E.U. can compete with the U.S. and China in finding entrepreneurs in the field.

"Europe needs to do something with innovation," said Kostantin Novoselov, a University of Manchester physicist and co-winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for his work in graphene, according to Bloomberg. "We need to create a climate for students and post-docs to consider careers in technology innovation, so it's as legitimate as working as an engineer in a large company."

The University of Manchester has already established an importance for graphene studies, and even has a work dedicated to nanotechnology.

On the university's website, the research by Kostarelos is described as using Carbon Nanotubes (CNT), and focusing on their safety for use with internal medicine.

"The stigma of structural similarity with asbestos fibers has slowed down progress of CNTs in nanomedicine. Here we review ... focusing on the importance of protein interaction, formation of the protein corona, and modulation of immune response," according to the website.

"We expect graphene to become in the 21st century what steel and metal were in the 20th," homas Skordas, who heads the EU unit in Brussels that oversees the graphene program, told Bloomberg. "We can already see its potential in a number of scientific domains. It's not hype."