Imagine that in a routine doctor’s visit, you could receive a vaccine that effectively clears late-stage cancer and also prevents that cancer from recurring?

While it may seem like a pipe dream, a powerful cancer vaccine is already in development through groundbreaking research led by Prabhani Atukorale, UMass Amherst assistant professor of biomedical engineering. Atukorale’s group, which is based at UMass Chan Medical School, has designed a smart nanoparticle-based delivery system that may overcome traditional barriers to effective vaccination against this complex disease. Currently in preclinical trials, the nanoparticle cancer vaccine platform is being advanced toward safety validation and future human trials.  

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“Cancer has touched so many of us,” says Atukorale. While traditional cancer therapies have improved dramatically and the overall cancer mortality rate has dropped by more than 30 percent over the past three decades, according to the American Cancer Society, there have not been meaningful improvements in treating patients with certain late-stage tumors, such as melanoma, pancreatic, and triple-negative breast cancer.

“We think our smart drug delivery system can shift the needle in cancer therapy in a very big way. Our end goal is achieving cures in extremely late-stage tumors that cannot be treated using any other approach,” Atukorale says. “The exciting thing about the smart nanoparticle approach is that this ‘moonshot’ is not far out of reach.”

A Novel Approach to Treating Cancer's Complexities

Atukorale grew up in the tropics, where she saw first-hand the dramatic impact that vaccination can have on public health by reducing the spread of infectious disease. But creating a vaccine against cancer, which she calls “a unique and complex beast,” has proven difficult historically because vaccines typically require a fully functional immune system to work effectively.

This is the challenge that her group is working to overcome with their novel delivery system. “What we’re doing differently is engineering a ‘smart’ nanoparticular therapy, which has personalized capabilities that traditional therapies do not,” she explains. “These smart particles can carry immune agonists to their target sites better than conventional treatments—particularly to anatomical components that are important in vaccination, such as lymph nodes and tumors.”

Atukorale’s lab has developed a “prime-pull” vaccine that works in two stages. First, it primes the body’s immune system by sending nanoparticles to lymph nodes to jump-start immune-response training. Next, in the pull stage, nanoparticles travel through the blood and are deposited in tumors, where they are taken up by immune cells. “They begin to release pro-inflammatory cytokines that pull all those T cells we have generated from the vaccine,” Atukorale explains. 

Using this approach, Atukorale’s group is pursuing two major avenues of research. The first, and most urgent, seeks to develop effective therapies for late-stage, treatment-resistant tumors. This line of research has focused on metastatic melanoma, a prevalent cancer in the U.S. that often doesn’t respond to traditional therapies. The researchers have shown that their approach not only effectively clears more than 50 percent of tumors in aggressive preclinical models but also successfully generates immune memory that prevents tumors from recurring. In summer 2026, Atukorale’s group received a $2.5 million R37 MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) Award from the National Cancer Institute to support research that deepens understanding of the mechanisms by which the vaccine generates an immune response. Ultimately, through this work, they aim to develop a nanoparticle vaccine platform that can be personalized to treat individual patients with different kinds of treatment-resistant cancer, including melanoma, pancreatic, and triple-negative breast cancer. 

“The long-term goal is to cure cancer and generate memory against it ever coming back,” says Atukorale. “We recognize that this is a lofty goal, but we absolutely think it is feasible based on the results we’ve seen so far.”

The group’s other major line of research seeks to develop a vaccine to prevent cancer from occurring in the first place. In research published in Cell Reports Medicine in 2025, Atukorale’s group demonstrated that their nanoparticle-based vaccine effectively prevented melanoma, pancreatic, and triple-negative breast cancer in up to 88 percent (depending on the type of cancer) of mice. 

“We think it is very achievable to have a goal where people go into their doctors’ offices to schedule a cancer vaccine that will broadly protect them from developing cancer down the road,” says Atukorale. 

An Award-Winning Start-Up to Bring the Cancer Vaccine to Market

As Atukorale’s group now works to validate the safety of their vaccine technology in order to advance it to human clinical trials within the next few years, she credits UMass’s support for making it possible to translate her biomedical engineering research into clinical applications. This includes supporting her lab’s location at UMass Chan Medical School—where proximity to clinicians has made possible vital research collaborations—as well as the research translation resources available through the UMass Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS).

“We went into engineering because we are interested in building a product that is useful to humanity,” says Atukorale. “We don’t always get these translational skills from academic learning environments, so we’re very fortunate to have this rich ecosystem within UMass and through IALS to connect us with these resources outside of campus.”

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To that end, Atukorale and Griffin Kane, a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab, have created a startup called NanoVax Therapeutics to bring their cancer vaccine to market. In July 2026, NanoVax was named Judges’ Choice Best Startup at the annual Massachusetts Life Sciences Innovation (MALSI) Day, earning top honors among emerging life sciences ventures from across Massachusetts.

“It has been very, very exciting to actually bring this idea to fruition,” Atukorale says.

“Receiving the MALSI Judges’ Choice Award was an incredible honor and a reflection of the tremendous support we have received from the broader Massachusetts life sciences ecosystem. We are deeply grateful to UMass Amherst IALS, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, MassVentures, MALSI, and the many mentors, collaborators, and colleagues who continue to support us throughout this journey,” adds Kane. “NanoVax was built through the dedication of many researchers who contributed to developing this platform, and we are excited to continue advancing this technology toward patients. As we enter the next phase of growth, we are actively seeking investment and strategic partnerships to help us bring this promising cancer immunotherapy approach closer to the clinic.”

“From a policy perspective, sometimes I think there’s a pessimism that certain diseases like cancer cannot be cured,” Atukorale says. “But we’ve made enormous advances in medicine and technology. I think we should hold ourselves accountable and take these moonshot leaps to figure out much better ways to treat cancer. I believe that this can come to pass.”

This story was originally published in September 2026.