{"id":2062,"date":"2026-04-24T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/pdnano\/?p=2062"},"modified":"2026-05-08T18:55:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T22:55:12","slug":"pitching-magsins-at-the-idea-centers-inaugural-research-commercialization-grant-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/pdnano\/?p=2062","title":{"rendered":"Pitching MagSiNs at the IDEA Center’s Inaugural Research Commercialization Grant Event"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Friday, April 24, 2026<\/strong>, I had the privilege of being one of six Notre Dame faculty<\/strong> selected to pitch at the inaugural Research Commercialization Grant (RCG) Pitch Event<\/strong>, hosted by the IDEA Center at Notre Dame<\/strong> in Leighton Hall at Innovation Park. The morning brought together external investors, the IDEA Center Advisory Council, and the broader Notre Dame research community for a showcase of translational science across the University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being part of the inaugural<\/em> cohort of pitchers makes this particularly meaningful \u2014 the RCG is a new, targeted translational funding mechanism that supports Notre Dame researchers in advancing inventions toward commercial readiness, with grants of up to $100,000<\/strong> to be awarded to selected finalists. Sincere thanks to the IDEA Center, its Advisory Council, the donors who made the program possible, and the University for standing up this kind of practical, commercialization-focused support for faculty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pitch: Reviving Shelved Cancer Drugs with MagSiNs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I closed out the morning with a 12:10 p.m. pitch titled “Reviving Shelved Cancer Drugs: MagSiNs, a Magnetoelectric Nanoparticle Platform for Tumor-Directed Delivery.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opening framing of the talk was a problem most people in the cancer drug-development world know well: many of the most promising cancer drug candidates never reach patients<\/strong> \u2014 not because they don’t work, but because the doses required to kill tumors also cause unacceptable damage to healthy tissue. The pipeline is full of potent, well-characterized compounds shelved for exactly this reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MagSiNs<\/strong> is our proposed solution. The platform pairs a chemotherapeutic with a magnetoelectric silica nanoparticle<\/strong>, exploiting the magnetoelectric effect to drive preferential accumulation in tumor tissue, where a brief externally applied magnetic field pulse then triggers on-demand release of the drug at the target site. Across multiple cancer cell lines and in mouse models of metastatic breast cancer, this strategy has concentrated drug at the tumor, enhanced anticancer activity, and substantially spared healthy tissue from the systemic toxicity that typically limits these compounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s Next: A Collaboration with the Sintim Lab on Colorectal Cancer<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The next phase of the project is what I am most excited about. We are pairing the MagSiN delivery platform with potent TAK1 inhibitors<\/strong> developed by Prof. Herman Sintim<\/strong> \u2014 the Grace-Rupley Professor of Chemical Biology<\/strong> and Associate Director of the Harper Cancer Research Institute<\/strong> at Notre Dame. TAK1 inhibitors block a key survival signal that cancer cells depend on, but their development has been held back precisely by the systemic toxicity problem MagSiNs is designed to solve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The immediate clinical target is an aggressive subtype of colorectal cancer<\/strong> for which current standard-of-care treatments extend patient life by only two to five months<\/strong>. The collaboration is exactly the kind of complementary pairing \u2014 a powerful but toxicity-limited drug candidate with a delivery system built to address that specific limitation \u2014 that the RCG program was designed to accelerate. Beyond colorectal cancer, the platform is intended as a generalizable strategy for reviving other drug candidates whose therapeutic potential has been throttled by the same problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With RCG support, the plan is to pair these compounds with the delivery system, generate preclinical efficacy and safety data in colorectal cancer models, and advance toward licensing and industry partnerships for clinical development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Particular thanks to Emily Stoler, Benjamin Sheyko, Karen Deak<\/strong> and the IDEA Center team for organizing the event, to my collaborators \u2014 especially Prof. Herman Sintim<\/strong> and his lab \u2014 and to the students whose work has built the MagSiN platform to this point. Thanks to Prof.<\/strong> Ryan Roeder (my postdoctoral mentor)<\/strong> for coaching me through the pitch deck. Translation only happens when the science, the partnerships, and the institutional support all line up, and on April 24th they did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More to come as the program moves to the finalist stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#IDEACenter #NotreDame #MagSiNs #Magnetoelectric #CancerResearch #DrugDelivery #TranslationalScience #Berthiaume #HarperCancer #ColorectalCancer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, April 24, 2026, I had the privilege of being one of six Notre Dame faculty selected to pitch at the inaugural Research Commercialization Grant (RCG) Pitch Event, hosted by the IDEA Center at Notre Dame in Leighton Hall at Innovation Park. The morning brought together external investors, the IDEA Center Advisory Council, and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2672,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39411,313538,405131,311330,313539],"tags":[405092,405129,405130,405086,405112,405107,405111],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harper-cancer-research-institute","category-hybrid-nanoparticles","category-idea-center","category-metastatic-cancer-cells","category-multidrug-resistance","tag-berthiaume-institute-for-precision-health","tag-colorectal-cancer","tag-magsins","tag-multidrug-resistance","tag-nallathambylab-2","tag-nanomedicine","tag-notredameresearch"],"yoast_head":"\nPitching MagSiNs at the IDEA Center's Inaugural Research Commercialization Grant Event - Nallathamby Laboratory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/pdnano\/?p=2062\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pitching MagSiNs at the IDEA Center's Inaugural Research Commercialization Grant Event - Nallathamby Laboratory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On Friday, April 24, 2026, I had the privilege of being one of six Notre Dame faculty selected to pitch at the inaugural Research Commercialization Grant (RCG) Pitch Event, hosted by the IDEA Center at Notre Dame in Leighton Hall at Innovation Park. 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