Notre Dame’s PD[N]ano Lab awarded a sole-source Defense Health Agency contract to supply phage-mimicking nanoparticles to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research
In 2025, the U.S. Army’s acquisition office did something it does routinely when it needs a capability the military doesn’t yet have: it asked the world. A Request for Information titled “Antibacterial Nanoparticle Technology” (ANT-PANDHA-26-P-0000_036893) invited companies, laboratories, and universities anywhere to describe nanoparticle therapeutics capable of taking on the multidrug-resistant bacteria that complicate combat wound care.
When the responses were evaluated, one technology met the requirement: the phage-mimicking antibacterial nanoparticles developed in the laboratory of Prakash D. Nallathamby at the University of Notre Dame’s Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health.
The result is a three-year, sole-source contract from the Defense Health Agency’s Military Infectious Diseases program (HT9426-26-C-E018, August 2026 – August 2029). Under the agreement, the Nallathamby lab manufactures and ships its particles to the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), where they are being tested against WRAIR’s Multidrug-Resistant Organism Repository and Surveillance Network panel — a collection of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and other clinical isolates drawn from real infections in service members.
Why “sole source” matters
Federal contracts are competed by default. To award one without competition, the contracting officer must document, on the record, that no other source can meet the need. That written determination is rare, and it is not a courtesy: it is the government’s own finding, after an international solicitation, that this particular technology is unmatched.
For a university laboratory, that finding is a form of validation no journal or grant panel can provide. The customer is not evaluating a proposal; it is procuring a product.
The technology
Bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacteria — have spent billions of years learning how to breach bacterial membranes. The Nallathamby lab’s particles borrow that architecture. Built on a core-shell nanostructure with a phage-like surface geometry, they physically disrupt bacterial membranes rather than interfering with a metabolic pathway. Because there is no single molecular target, the usual routes to resistance don’t apply, and the particles work against the ESKAPE pathogens that top the World Health Organization’s priority list.
The platform was first described in Nanoscale Advances in 2019. A 2024 study in the same journal showed that peptide-conjugated versions clear infections in murine wound models, and that work earned a 2024 Popular Advances selection from the journal and first-place poster honors at the Military Health System Research Symposium. The core invention is protected by U.S. Patent 12,161,725 B2 (2024).
What comes next
WRAIR’s evaluation runs through 2029 and will define the particles’ efficacy profile against combat-relevant pathogens. In parallel, the lab is pursuing federal programs to extend the platform to burn-wound treatment, antimicrobial implant coatings, and wound-healing formulations.
“A Professor of the Practice is appointed to bridge discovery and application,” Nallathamby said. “The measure of this work is not the paper. It’s whether the science leaves the lab as something a clinician – or a medic – can use. I give thanks to Jesus for this opportunity to do good.”
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