• P.H.A.G.E. Phages for Human Applications Group Europe

  • DSMZ/PHAGE Scientific Cooperation

    DSMZ and P.H.A.G.E. are cooperating in order to establish a Therapeutic Phage Bank, a collection of phages being in focus of potential application.
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P.H.A.G.E. Who we are

We are an international non-profit organization to support phage research and phage therapy in Europe.

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Literature For Expert Reading

Our collection of Literature can surely interest you.

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P.H.A.G.E. How we work

Want to know more about PHAGE as non-profit organization...

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Details

In June 2016, a 61-year-old man was hospitalised for Enterobacter cloacae peritonitis and severe abdominal sepsis with disseminated intravascular coagulation, secondary to a diaphragmatic hernia with bowel strangulation. The patient had a prolonged hospital course complicated by gangrene of the peripheral extremities, resulting in the amputation of the lower limbs and the development of large necrotic pressure sores.

Three months after admission, the patient was transferred to the Queen Astrid military hospital for surgical management of the pressure sores. Wound cultures on admission revealed colonisation with, amongst others, multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa. One month after admission, the patient developed septicaemia with colistin-only-sensitive P. aeruginosa. Intravenous colistin therapy was started.

Bacteriophages are increasingly put forward as safe alternatives or additions to antibiotic therapy. Historical reports show that they were efficaciously used via the intravenous route, especially in typhoid fever and Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia, but this is—as far as we know—the first contemporary report of intravenous bacteriophage monotherapy against P. aeruginosa septicaemia in humans.

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Soviet-Era Treatment Could Be The New Weapon In The War Against Antibiotic Resistance

Every year an increasing number of health tourists are travelling to Eastern bloc countries to receive an old Soviet medical treatment, which could be the answer to the West’s crisis in antibiotics. Receiving life saving medical treatment a long way from home is never ideal, but for many of these patients phage therapy is the last in a long line of previously unsuccessful remedies used in the fight against chronic bacterial infections – which conventional Western antibiotics have been unable to shift. Phage therapy – the use of bacteria-specific parasitic viruses to kill pathogens could offer a viable alternative to deal with multi-drug resistant infections. Viruses that kill bacteria may sound like something out of a sci-fi film but phages have been used in this way for decades in Russia and Georgia – neither of which have the same issues surrounding antibiotic resistance that we do. It is this rapid rise of antibiotic resistance that has led the Western world to look to Georgia in a bid to find new ways to control bacterial infections.