Phage Directory Phage Directory

Jessica Sacher, PhD

Phage Directory (Co-founder); Stanford University (Staff Scientist); Bollyky Lab

I'm a co-founder of Phage Directory and have a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Alberta (I studied Campylobacter phage biology).

For Phage Directory, I help physicians find phages for their patients, and I'm always trying to find new ways to help the phage field grow (especially through connecting people and highlighting awesome stuff I see happening in the field).

I spent 2022-2024 as a postdoc in Jon Iredell's group at Westmead Institute for Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, helping get Phage Australia off the ground. I helped set up workflows for phage sourcing, biobanking, diagnostics, production, purification and QC of therapeutic phage batches, and helped build data collection systems to track everything we did. We treated more than a dozen patients in our first year, and I'm so proud of that!

As of 2024, I joined the Bollyky lab at Stanford University as a Staff Scientist, where I'm focused on building the Stanford Center for Phage Pharmaceuticals. The ‘Phage Pharm’ will be a home for innovative phage pharmacodynamics and phage-immune interactions research, with a focus on translating findings directly to the bedside and back to the bench.

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  1. Q&A: Favorite phage production equipmentThis week we're trying something new — let's call it Phage Community Q&A! You send us your questions, we send you off-the-cuff answers. This week, Jess shares her favorite phage-making equipment in response to a researcher who's setting up…323Jessica Sacher
  2. How to get successful outcomes with phage therapy"When I first treated, we had no idea how much to give, how often to give... we weren't aware of what the concentration of phage should be." IPATH's Dr. Saima Aslam shares how eight years of treating patients has taught her team to achieve…322Jessica Sacher
  3. Our Phage Picks for Aug 2025It’s Phage Picks time! This week, we highlight some new mind-expanding papers — one showing how phage killing might train the immune system like vaccines, one unpacking how temperate phages rewrite bacterial flagella with RNA-guided tools,…321Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  4. You should sequence your phagesWhen's the last time you sequenced the phages in your lab? Have you ever, or are you relying on what someone said they were? You might be like 12/13 phage labs and have secret mixtures masquerading as pure phages. You should sequence your…319Jessica Sacher
  5. Inside Canada's first prosthetic joint phage treatment"It still doesn't happen overnight — the paperwork itself, I aged like 20 years." Dr. Marisa Azad shares the real timeline and logistics behind Canada's first bone infection phage therapy case, plus why her N-of-1 approach creates a…318Jessica Sacher
  6. How to read papersThis week we're diving into something we're pretty sure every researcher grapples with: how to read papers without your brain melting! Jess posted about this on LinkedIn and it blew up — tons of researchers shared their own…316Jessica Sacher
  7. Our Phage Picks for June 2025It's Phage Picks time! This week Jess picks another 'bread-and-butter' phage lab paper about how to keep your phages stable (genetically and physically) over the decades, and Jan surfaces a killer overview of all the ways phage + AI is…315Jessica Sacher
  8. How to navigate regulatory limbo: a Canadian phage therapy CEO's playbook"There's 145 components of the regulatory requirements that I don't fit in. So how do I get past that? And governments right now say, I don't know."314Jessica Sacher
  9. Why can't more patients access phage therapy?"This feels just like the early days of the HIV crisis. People are dying, you're not hearing about it. We need a group like ACT UP to bring this to the public. We're not going to get phage therapy until people start demanding we have it."310Jessica Sacher
  10. Finally, phase 2 phage therapy data! Inside BiomX's successful trial with CEO Jonathan Solomon"We put a dent in the theory that phage therapy doesn't work. Maybe it does work. Maybe it's worth taking a risk." This week we talk to Jonathan Solomon, CEO of BiomX, about their successful phase 2 clinical trial for diabetic foot…309Jessica Sacher
  11. C&T Round Up for April 2025!Another round up! This month, we feature a new Lab Hacks format from Jess, one of our most controversial Capsid posts on AI use in science, and a Phage Picks of some of Jessica's nearest and dearest protocols (she uses these all the time —…308Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  12. Our Phage Picks for April 2025It's Phage Picks time! This week's theme is bread and butter — two picks from Jess about methods papers that should be staples of any phage lab: her favourite phage-making paper, and an (aspirational) phage quantification paper she really…307Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  13. Does every scientist need an AI co-scientist?"It was right in front of us the whole time." Imperial College London professors José Penadés & Tiago Costa challenged Google's new 'AI co-scientist' with a phage PICI question they'd just solved after years of work. Given their unpublished…306Jessica Sacher
  14. Tips from the lab: Rapid lab hacksNew format alert! Here's 5 rapidfire, off-the-cuff tips from the lab — from how to tweak plaque size to purifying filamentous phages to preventing phage cross-contamination. These first 5 are written by Jessica but we hope to crowdsource…305Jessica Sacher
  15. C&T Round Up for March 2025!Roundup time! This month, we heard from Aaryan's experience as an undergrad researcher at Paul Bollyky's lab. We picked papers across topics like T4-AAV viral vectors, cell-free synthesis of phages, and taxMyPhage, a new tool for…304Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  16. Our Phage Picks for March 2025What else can phages do, besides kill bacteria? Are bacteria even needed to make them anymore? In this month's Phage Picks issue, we cover phage+AAV hybrids to deliver genes to eukaryotic cells, cell-free phage synthesis, and a bonus…302Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  17. If antibiotics companies fail, why won't phage companies?"As soon as investors hear 'infectious disease,' their eyes get big. When they hear 'antibacterial,' alarm bells start ringing.” And yet, Amanda Burkardt and Mayukh Das are building Phiogen Pharmaceuticals anyway. Why?301Jessica Sacher
  18. First food, then pharma: How Intralytix played the long game with phages"Phages? We don't use those here." This week, learn how these words propelled Sandro Sulakvelidze, fresh from phage-friendly Tbilisi, into a 25+ year journey to build a phage company with FDA-approved products.297Jessica Sacher
  19. The Year of the Phage MachineHappy 2025 everyone! It's still January so we can still say happy new year! We are finally back after a nice long extended Christmas break + insanity January. Tons of phage news has accumulated — here you go!296Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  20. Year in Review 2024This year we moved from Sydney to San Francisco — what a year. Here's some reflections, things that went well, things that didn't, and some things we learned. Happy holidays to everyone!295Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher

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