The backbone of the vaccine is a modified, harmless bacteriophage called M13, which forms a nanofiber that can be coated with cancer antigens. By precisely controlling the density of those cancer proteins, the researchers found that they could create a vaccine that prevents the development of colon tumors in mice. 'The great thing about this is that it's modular and we could switch out different antigens on demand, so you could design it to be patient-specific and target a known antigen for a particular kind of cancer,' says Angela Belcher, the James Mason Crafts Professor of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering and a member of the Koch Institute. Belcher is the senior author of the study, which appears today in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials. Shengnan Huang, research scientist at the Koch Institute, is the paper's lead author. Jack Rudrum, Huaiyao Peng, and Hao Nghi Luu, graduate students at the Koch Institute, are also authors of the paper. For...
learn more
