Prakash Nallathamby has been named a 2026 recipient of the University of Notre Dame IDEA Center’s Research Commercialization Grant (RCG), alongside bioengineering doctoral student Aurelie Brownsberger. The RCG program provides targeted, translational funding designed to accelerate the real-world impact of Notre Dame research by advancing the commercial readiness of promising University inventions.
The award recognizes the MagSiNs platform — a magnetoelectric silica nanoparticle system built to rescue cancer drug candidates that never reached patients because their effective doses were too toxic to healthy tissue. MagSiNs chemically binds a drug to a nanoparticle that preferentially accumulates in tumor tissue by exploiting magnetoelectric differences between healthy and tumor tissue, with drug release then triggered by a brief electromagnetic pulse.
Grant funding will support pairing MagSiNs with potent anticancer compounds developed by Herman Sintim, Grace-Rupley Professor of Chemical Biology and associate director of the Harper Cancer Research Institute, to target an aggressive, high-mortality subtype of colorectal cancer. The work will also generate preclinical efficacy and safety data in colorectal cancer models — a step toward reviving therapies once sidelined by toxicity.
Full Press Release Here: https://research.nd.edu/news-and-events/news/idea-center-grants-support-commercialization-of-faculty-innovations-2026/
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