MIT researchers reported a customizable nanoparticle delivery platform for personalized cancer vaccines, built on a modified, harmless bacteriophage called M13 that forms a nanofiber coatable with cancer antigens. The study, published Oct. 30, 2026, in Advanced Healthcare Materials, was led by senior author Angela Belcher and lead author Shengnan Huang of the Koch Institute.

By adding one or two negatively charged amino acids and a genetic mutation, the team said it could tune antigen density, expressing a model antigen at densities from 6 percent to 70 percent. In mice, a 35 percent-density vaccine was more protective than a 6 percent version, reducing tumor development after later exposure to melanoma cells expressing the antigen, with more antigen-targeting T cells generated. A separate higher-density vaccine carrying the colon-tumor neoantigen ADPGK also left mice much less likely to develop colon tumors, the study reported.

The work tested prevention in mice, not treatment of human patients. An outside researcher, Alberto Danielli of the University of Bologna, said the platform's effectiveness against established tumors and with additional antigens remained to be seen, according to the source.