How this is built — and held to account
Credibility is the entire asset of a science site. Here is exactly how PhageCocktails is researched, reviewed, and sourced — and an honest scorecard of the standards we hold ourselves to, including what is already in place and what is still on the roadmap.
Last reviewed 2026-06-26
How content is made
Material is researched with AI assistance — multi-agent literature sweeps across PubMed, the primary literature, ClinicalTrials.gov, and regulatory and company sources — then curated, fact-checked against primary sources, and edited by a human. Where a claim is a company press release or conference abstract rather than peer-reviewed data, we say so. Where a number is a modeled projection rather than a measurement, we label it.
Conflicts of interest
PhageCocktails is an independent research-and-education project connected to Microbiome Medicine and its founder, Karen Pendergrass. We hold no current financial position in the companies profiled. Any future commercial activity, funding, or holdings that could create a conflict will be disclosed here.
The credibility scorecard
The standards a skeptical scientist, regulator, or investor checks first — and where we stand on each. We would rather show the roadmap than pretend it’s all done.
Citation discipline
In placeFactual claims link primary sources — PubMed, DOI, ClinicalTrials.gov, FDA/EMA — not secondary blogs. Each of the 50 deployment pages carries its own studies.
Evidence tiering & honesty about failures
In placeWe separate measured data from projections and peer-reviewed results from conference-tier claims. The evidence tracker keeps negative trials (PhagoBurn, the Tbilisi UTI RCT) in plain view.
Medical-boundary disclaimer
In placeA site-wide "not a treatment provider / not medical advice" boundary and a full disclaimer page.
Regulatory fluency
In placeA regulatory page in regulators’ own vocabulary (eIND, IND→BLA, Belgian magistral, Eur. Ph. 5.31).
Machine-readable structure (SEO + LLMO)
In placeSchema.org JSON-LD (Organization, MedicalWebPage, FAQPage, Person), a sitemap, and an llms.txt so answer engines can cite the work accurately.
Named people, verifiable sources
In placeThe Who’s Who links every profile to a verifiable institutional or scholarly source rather than asserting anonymous "experts."
Content provenance & review dates
In placeContent is AI-researched and human-curated; key pages carry a visible "last reviewed" date.
Scientific Advisory Board
On the roadmapWe will not list advisors who have not consented. A named board with disclosed conflicts of interest will be added as it is formally assembled.
Per-phage characterization spec sheets
On the roadmapOnce a phage bank exists, each phage will get a spec sheet with its genome accession and a toxin/AMR/lysogeny safety screen — independently verifiable against NCBI.
Living trials tracker via API
On the roadmapThe evidence ledger is currently hand-curated; a live ClinicalTrials.gov-fed tracker is planned.