Abstract: Cryogenic biomedicine is a multidisciplinary field. As the main application directions, cryosurgery and cryopreservation have played an active role in disease treatment and prolonging the preservation time of biological samples. However, traditional cryotherapy needs to make breakthroughs in achieving intensive killing and satisfying conformal treatment. Cryopreservation also faces the challenges of protective agent loading, ice crystal regulation and rapid rewarming of vitrified samples. The introduction of nanotechnology has greatly expanded the method of cryotherapy and cryopreservation, and has become the key factor to break the bottleneck of cryogenic biomedicine. In this paper, the mechanism of nanotechnology is reviewed, and the applications of nanomaterials in ice regulation, protective agent delivery and heat transfer enhancement are introduced. It is expected to summarize the existing experience and promote faster and better development of the field.