The people building phage therapy

Co-discovered bacteriophages in 1917, coined the term 'bacteriophage,' and pioneered the first clinical use of phages to treat bacterial infections in 1919, founding the field of phage therapy.

Pasteur Institute (historical) · Paris, France (historical)

Published the first description of a 'bacteriolytic agent' in The Lancet in 1915, independently observing the phenomenon later understood as bacteriophages two years before d'Hérelle.

Brown Institution, London (historical) · London, United Kingdom (historical)

Founded the world's first dedicated bacteriophage institute in Tbilisi in 1923, establishing the Soviet/Georgian tradition of phage therapy that continues today.

Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology (historical) · Tbilisi, Georgia (historical)

Catalyzed the modern US revival of phage therapy by orchestrating the emergency phage treatment that saved her husband Tom Patterson in 2016, then co-founded IPATH, North America's first phage therapy center.

UC San Diego School of Medicine · San Diego, California, USA

Infectious disease physician who led the clinical phage treatment of Tom Patterson and co-founded IPATH, helping establish protocols for compassionate-use intravenous phage therapy in the US.

UC San Diego School of Medicine · San Diego, California, USA

Leads clinical phage therapy at IPATH, advancing trials in transplant recipients and cystic fibrosis patients and helping build phage therapy programs in both the US and Australia.

UC San Diego Health · San Diego, California, USA

Architect of Belgium's pioneering 'magistral phage' regulatory framework and lead author of a landmark 100-patient personalized phage therapy case series, making Belgium a global hub for clinical phage therapy.

Queen Astrid Military Hospital · Brussels, Belgium

Built France's leading program for phage therapy of complex bone and joint and prosthetic infections, pioneering intraoperative hydrogel phage delivery for orthopedic salvage.

Hospices Civils de Lyon / Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University · Lyon, France

Founder and leader of Phage Australia, building a national network and biobank that established a sustainable, end-to-end clinical phage therapy ecosystem in Australia.

Westmead Institute for Medical Research / University of Sydney · Sydney, Australia

Founded Baylor's TAILOR Labs, one of the few US academic phage therapy cores, delivering personalized phage cocktails to patients and spinning out the company Phiogen.

Baylor College of Medicine · Houston, Texas, USA

Led the first successful engineered-phage treatment of a disseminated Mycobacterium abscessus infection (2019) and runs the world's largest mycobacteriophage collection through the SEA-PHAGES education program.

University of Pittsburgh, Department of Biological Sciences · Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Led the bench work identifying and engineering the phage cocktail that treated the first Mycobacterium abscessus patient, and authored the largest compassionate-use mycobacterial phage therapy case series.

University of Pittsburgh · Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Pioneered 'phage steering' — selecting phages that force bacteria to trade off antibiotic resistance for phage resistance — and co-founded Yale's phage therapy center.

Yale University / Yale School of Medicine · New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Co-developed phage steering and isolated the OMKO1 phage used in the first US compassionate-use case of phage therapy for a Pseudomonas-infected aortic graft; co-founder of Felix Biotechnology.

Yale University · New Haven, Connecticut, USA

A leading authority on the Eliava Institute's century of phage therapy experience, she has been the principal bridge translating Soviet-era Georgian phage knowledge to the Western scientific community.

George Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology · Tbilisi, Georgia

Established the UK's first Centre for Phage Research and assembled one of Europe's largest phage libraries, with pioneering work on bacteriophages against Clostridioides difficile.

University of Leicester · Leicester, United Kingdom

Pioneered the development of phage-encoded lysins (enzybiotics) as a new class of antibacterials, demonstrating rapid, specific killing of pathogens such as Streptococcus and Staphylococcus.

The Rockefeller University · New York, New York, USA

A founder of viral metagenomics (viromics) who showed phages are the most abundant biological entities on Earth and authored 'Life in Our Phage World,' shaping modern phage ecology.

San Diego State University · San Diego, California, USA

A specialist in non-clinical development of therapeutic phage products and host-range diagnostics, advancing the practical implementation of Belgium's magistral phage compounding model.

Vésale Bioscience · Namur, Belgium

Eliava-trained scientist who built and curates the Queen Astrid Military Hospital phage bank, central to the production and quality control of Belgium's personalized phage treatments.

Queen Astrid Military Hospital · Brussels, Belgium

Provided the first mechanistic description of bacteriophage transcytosis across human epithelial layers, reshaping understanding of how phages interact with the human body during therapy.

Monash University · Melbourne, Australia

A leading phage biologist and genomicist whose lab anchors the European PhageBiotics community and underpins the science behind Belgium's clinical phage therapy consortium.

KU Leuven · Leuven, Belgium

Leads phage biology and discovery at Pittsburgh, developing rigorous assays and tools to optimize phage cocktail design, dosing, and resistance management for clinical use.

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine · Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

A foundational phage molecular biologist (lysis mechanisms) whose Center for Phage Technology isolated and delivered the phages that saved Tom Patterson, the first US IV phage therapy success.

Texas A&M University · College Station, Texas, USA

Immunologist and infectious disease leader steering Armata's clinical-stage phage pipeline, including AP-SA02 advancing toward a Phase 3 trial for complicated Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia.

Armata Pharmaceuticals · Marina del Rey, California, USA

Founded and leads Locus Biosciences, developer of CRISPR-Cas3-enhanced bacteriophage therapeutics, with LBP-EC01 in a registrational Phase 2/3 trial for recurrent urinary tract infections.

Locus Biosciences · Morrisville, North Carolina, USA

Leads Felix Biotechnology, commercializing the Yale/UC Berkeley 'phage steering' approach with lead candidate YPT-01 in trials for Pseudomonas aeruginosa lung infections in cystic fibrosis.

Felix Biotechnology · South San Francisco, California, USA

Co-founded SNIPR Biome to repurpose CRISPR as a precision bacterial-killing technology; its CRISPR-armed phage SNIPR001 completed a positive first-in-human Phase 1 trial against E. coli.

SNIPR Biome · Copenhagen, Denmark

Co-founded Eligo Bioscience, pioneering in-situ microbiome gene therapy that uses phage-derived vectors to deliver CRISPR and base editors into bacteria in the body.

Eligo Bioscience · Paris, France

CRISPR antimicrobial co-inventor who co-founded Eligo Bioscience and develops phage-based DNA delivery systems for precise genetic modification of the microbiome.

Eligo Bioscience / Institut Pasteur · Paris, France

Co-founded Intralytix and secured the world's first FDA approval of a phage-based product (ListShield, 2006), building the largest portfolio of approved phage food-safety products and advancing therapeutic trials.

Intralytix · Columbia, Maryland, USA

Leads Phiogen, the Baylor TAILOR Labs spin-out whose directed-evolution platform engineers high-potency phages; recognized with the Phage Therapy 2023 Best Innovation award.

Phiogen Pharmaceuticals · Houston, Texas, USA

Co-founded Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, pioneering scalable personalized phage delivery (PhageBank) and GMP phage manufacturing; APT later merged into BiomX.

BiomX (formerly Adaptive Phage Therapeutics) · Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA

Leads the historic Eliava Institute, the world's oldest continuously operating phage therapy center, sustaining and modernizing nearly a century of Georgian phage research and treatment.

George Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology · Tbilisi, Georgia

Co-founded Phage Directory, the global community platform and Phage Alert service that connects clinicians with phage labs to source phages for patients with life-threatening infections.

Phage Directory · Edmonton, Canada / remote

Co-founded Phage Directory, designing the technology and data infrastructure that underpins global phage matchmaking and partnerships such as the Phage Directory–Phage Australia collaboration.

Phage Directory · Edmonton, Canada / remote

Founded the Citizen Phage Library, a crowd-sourced UK collection of over 1,000 phages against priority pathogens that supplies personalized phages for compassionate-use treatment.

University of Exeter · Exeter, United Kingdom

Co-leads Phage Australia and established the NSW Phage Biobank, building the genomic and data infrastructure for nationally coordinated personalized phage therapy.

Westmead Institute for Medical Research / University of Sydney · Sydney, Australia

Directed CARB-X's global portfolio of non-traditional antibacterial products, channeling early-stage funding into numerous phage and phage-derived therapeutics targeting antimicrobial resistance.

CARB-X (Boston University) · Boston, Massachusetts, USA

The FDA's longtime lead reviewer interfacing with developers on bacteriophage products for clinical trials and expanded access, shaping US regulatory pathways for phage therapy.

US Food and Drug Administration · Silver Spring, Maryland, USA