Posts

A Science paper by Samuel J. Hobbs and Philip J. Kranzusch reports that phage prohead protease activity activates the CD-NTase enzymes of bacterial CBASS defence: the authors reconstitute CBASS recognition of phage T4 in vitro, identify cleavage of a CD-NTase activation loop as the trigger of immune signal synthesis, and show that phage prohead proteases activate CBASS in vivo, explaining how immunity is initiated late during infection. Structure-based analyses identify activation loops in clade A, D and G CD-NTases.

TattleTail is a rule-based bioinformatic pipeline for identifying canonical pyocin-encoding gene clusters in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It targets the characteristic trpE–trpG-associated loci, combining conserved pyocin genes with exclusion of canonical phage features to distinguish these clusters from prophage regions. It complements existing prophage prediction tools.

Graduates who are nationals or permanent residents of Sub-Saharan African countries can apply for an MPhil in Molecular Cell Biology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Ghana. Scholarships support up to 24 months of study. Applicants need an above-average first degree completed within the last six years. The DAAD portal deadline is November 12, 2026.

A Nature Microbiology study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Berkeley and Penn State presents a phylogeny-agnostic machine-learning framework that predicts strain-level phage–host interactions across diverse bacterial genera from genome sequences alone, matching species-specific methods (AUROC 0.67–0.94) across six datasets (115,037 interactions, 949 bacterial strains, 518 phages). Experimental validation of 1,240 predicted E. coli phage–host interactions gave an AUROC of 0.84, and model-guided cocktail design reached up to 97.5% bacterial coverage with five phages.

Applications for Innovate UK Innovation Loans will pause from 11am on October 9, 2026, until January 2027. UK-registered SMEs can submit an expression of interest for loans of £100,000–£5 million for innovative late-stage R&D projects with strong commercial potential.

A Nature Microbiology study from ETH Zürich, University Hospital Basel, the University of Basel and the University of Lausanne presents HIDEN-SEQ (hidden Acr-enabled transposon-insertion sequencing), which systematically links viral genes to selectable phenotypes. Using phage T4 it reproduced the established gene essentiality map, and it is portable to non-model phages, revealing conditionally essential genes in several bacterial hosts and conditions, including previously unknown antidefence factors matched to specific antiviral defences.

Phage Tn-seq is a transposon-based approach to studying phage gene essentiality and engineering.

A Nature Communications study from Stanford University and collaborators used a mouse model of established Pseudomonas aeruginosa wound infection to compare phage route, dose and frequency: topical, but not systemic, delivery reduced wound bacterial burden, and phage resistance emerged rapidly, suggesting a benefit from high, repeated doses. The team then developed HydroPhage, a hyaluronan-based hydrogel with dynamic covalent crosslinks that delivers high-titer phage over one week.

Engineered non-pathogenic E. coli producing lytic phages protected mice against Salmonella infection in a preclinical proof-of-concept study.

This review surveys more than 80 phage bioinformatics tools for identification, assembly, annotation, taxonomy, lifestyle, defence, and host prediction. It compares sequence homology, machine learning, and foundation-model approaches, then proposes web and command-line workflows.

Researchers can apply for up to US$50,000 in credits per scientific project. The expanded AI for Science programme accepts any researcher and extends beyond its initial biological-science focus to other fields. Biology and chemistry access currently uses Opus-class models. The announcement gives no fixed application deadline.

Bignaud, Lamy-Besnier, Koszul, Debarbieux, Marbouty and colleagues followed the 3D organization of the virulent phage PAK_P3 genome during infection of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The phage genome rapidly decondenses into a specific 3D organization that reflects its transcriptional program while the host genome decondenses as gene expression wanes, and specific contacts between the phage genome and the host chromosome show how the phage exploits its host's spatial genome architecture.

Inserm's Phage Therapy booster programme, led by its Health technologies and Immunology, inflammation, infectiology and microbiology institutes, will fund a single three-year consortium of 10-12 participants (individual researchers or teams) working on phage biotechnology and bioproduction, preclinical frameworks and the societal impact of phage therapy. The call for letters of intent opened on 10 July 2026 and closed on 18 September 2026 at 5:00 PM; the programme kick-off meeting is scheduled for 28 January 2027.

A Nature Communications Review by Sam P. B. van Beljouw and Li Yuping (Biozentrum, University of Basel) on jumbo bacteriophages, whose double-stranded DNA genomes exceed 200 kb. It covers their diversity, evolutionary origins, distinctive morphologies and lifecycles, interactions with bacterial hosts and potential for biotechnology and therapy, with a focus on, but not limited to, the Chimalliviridae phages.

A meta-analysis of 12 infant cohorts across 8 countries (1,893 samples from 999 infants) models gut virome development over the first three years of life. Viral richness rose significantly over the first eight months alongside a loss of community evenness, and infant viromes became more similar with age; the transition to a stable state involved fewer extracellular temperate phages and shifts in phage-encoded auxiliary metabolic genes.

Cui and colleagues report in Science Advances that Acinetobacter baumannii makes 2′,3′-cyclic nucleotide monophosphates (2′,3′-cNMPs) with the ribonuclease RnaA and senses them through the receptor protein CRPAb, which affects the interaction with the promoters of target genes. Bacteriophages raise 2′,3′-cNMP levels to up-regulate transcription of the transposases and Mu-like integrases required for phage DNA integration, showing that phages can hijack this bacterial signal.

In this preprint, a 1:1 Loop and Spear cocktail did not improve bacterial suppression over Loop alone and showed multiplicity-dependent antagonism. In a Galleria mellonella larvae infection model, only sequential treatment with Spear followed by Loop improved survival beyond monotherapy.

A high-throughput platform identified gut phages that adhere to epithelial layers and the immunoglobulin (Ig)-like domain proteins that mediate it: displayed on a non-adherent phage, they confer epithelial binding and internalization in vitro and longer retention in the mouse gut. Phages encoding these adhesins include crAss-like phages and myoviruses related to the proposed Flandersviridae family, and internalized phages traffic to the endoplasmic reticulum through the Golgi apparatus.

Parallel sequential fluorescence in situ hybridization (par-seqFISH) profiled the transcriptional activity of individual phage lambda genomes during synchronized infection of E. coli. Cells pursuing lysogeny show consensus activity among all their phages, whereas lytic cells may contain phages with lysogenic activity, supporting the idea that consensus among coinfecting phages is required for dormancy.

Meijer, Skiadas, Rainey, Hogeweg and Dutilh tracked viral dynamics in 20 compost-derived microbial communities over one year and observed massive, parallel outbreaks of Theomophage, a previously uncharacterized member of the Schitoviridae that reached up to 74% of metagenomic reads, the largest bacteriophage outbreak documented to date. Theomophage stayed genetically stable during outbreaks, but experimental migration of viral communities triggered rapid evolution through recombination and new mutations.

Metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metabolic modelling followed a thermophilic CO2-converting (biomethanation) trickle bed reactor over 353 days of stepwise gas-feed perturbations, tracking single nucleotide variant trajectories in both prokaryotes and viruses. System destabilization triggered a viral bloom, and some community members recovered from phage infection through targeted modifications of their defense systems.

The study presents DepoCatalog, an experimentally validated collection of 129 recombinantly prepared Klebsiella phage depolymerases across 75 KL-types, and proposes a five-class framework for their diversity. The accompanying DepoCat database reports 131 depolymerases and supports exploration by capsule-type specificity or structural classification.

Science news feature by Richard Stone (Science 392, issue 6800, May 21, 2026, pp. 800-804), whose standfirst states that key human defenses against pathogens were forged billions of years ago in microbial battles with viruses.

Researchers profiled 95 Pseudomonas phages against 99 clinical isolates and trained strain-specific models to predict infectivity. In a single held-out strain in vivo, the model-designed cocktail produced a higher median CFU reduction than the expert-designed cocktail.

PHAGE4DAIR, a Horizon Europe project coordinated by Qeen Biotechnologies (Canada), runs from 1 June 2026 to 31 May 2031 with an EU contribution of €14,869,038.73. It is a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, adaptive Phase I/II trial of a GMP-manufactured five-phage cocktail targeting Staphylococcus aureus in prosthetic joint infections treated with DAIR (debridement, antibiotics and implant retention), with phages given intraoperatively and intravenously alongside standard-of-care antibiotics.

Using the Klebsiella podophages KP32, K11 and KP34, the authors validated the interaction between the primary RBP branching domain and the secondary RBP docking peptide. They used this interaction to engineer a KP32 scaffold that propagated on both Klebsiella and Escherichia hosts.

Biochemistry, cryo-electron microscopy and single-molecule imaging show that Hna, a broadly distributed anti-phage system that triggers abortive infection, is a 3'-5' single-stranded DNA exonuclease forming an auto-inhibited dimer under physiological ATP. A phage-encoded single-stranded DNA-binding protein (5A SSB) destabilizes the dimer and drives dysregulated nuclease activation, while phage escape mutants encode SSB variants that evade Hna.

A structural and functional study of QatB and QatC, two components of the four-protein QatABCD anti-phage defense system. QatC bound to the ATP analog AMPPNP and the QatB-QatC heterodimer were solved, and structural analysis suggests QatB may serve as a substrate of QatC, implicating a potential regulatory mechanism.

More than two-thirds of Streptococcus thermophilus strains harbor a phage satellite structurally similar to Staphylococcus aureus pathogenicity islands (SaPIs). Virulent phages can trigger induction of these satellites, and their DNA can then be transferred into a new strain by natural competence, which enhances the recipient strain's resistance to virulent phages.

A metagenomic study of 450 virus-enriched honey bee gut samples from 63 hives across eight European countries, three seasons and three gut sections catalogues a diverse phageome, including many phages that appear to belong to novel taxa and a core set of 97 highly prevalent phages. It also identifies potential auxiliary metabolic genes, such as a sulfur metabolism gene carried by predominantly temperate phages that likely infect mutualistic honey bee core bacteria.

A Nature Communications Perspective by Aleksandra Petrović-Fabijan and Stephen T. Abedon argues that phage therapy must move beyond anecdote to clinical reproducibility, and identifies three foundational pillars to be addressed through interdisciplinary collaboration: drug delivery, treatment effectiveness and managing bacterial resistance.

Lytic selection and evolution (LySE) is a T7-based method for near-continuous directed evolution of bacterial gene clusters that keeps discrete checkpoints: a hypermutagenic T7 DNA polymerase mutates a target gene cluster carried on a T7 phagemid, and alternating lysis and transduction cycles discard off-target genomic mutations. It evolved a 25-fold increase in tetA-encoded tigecycline resistance in 5 cycles and a 50.9% increase in endpoint biomass of a strain using ethylene glycol as its sole carbon source (Nature Microbiology, 2026).

V-score and VL-score are annotation-free metrics that quantify the "virus-likeness" of protein families and genomes, released with an open-access searchable database, V-Score-Search. Applied to public protein databases they link 19-59% of protein families with viruses (a 5-8x increase over current estimates) and detect viral genomes, prophages and host-derived auxiliary viral genes in fragmented sequences more efficiently than existing approaches.

A high-throughput droplet microfluidics platform co-encapsulates individual phages and bacteria to quantify single phage infection events, with control over exposure time and the phage-to-bacteria ratio. It measures lysis events and lysis kinetics without the progeny-driven infection that confounds bulk cultures, and is applicable to diverse phage-host systems.

The study links temperate-phage capsule specificity with diverse receptor-binding proteins, including classical depolymerases and SGNH-domain hydrolases predicted to deacetylate polysaccharides. The team also shared English and Polish comics of the discovery, created with illustrator Paweł Piechnik.

Large-scale comparative cell biology and biochemistry of 16 bacterial nuclease-NTPase antiphage defence systems shows that protein-protein complex formation is a shared feature. The nucleases of the Pa AbpAB, Bt Hachiman and Ec PD-T4-8 systems degrade nucleic acids with highly degenerate recognition site preferences, while the Azaca system specifically targets modified phage genomic DNA (Nature Microbiology, 2026).

A perspective arguing that traditional bacteriophage methods measure population averages and miss variation between individual particles. It advocates optical microscopy and flow cytometry approaches that can reveal phenotypic heterogeneity across the infection cycle: binding kinetics, genome entry, replication, coinfection dynamics and particle stability.

Terlizzi and colleagues report a systematic review in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases of phage therapy in cystic fibrosis: 19 studies covering 51 patients and 52 phage treatment courses, mostly against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Microbiological improvement was reached in 35 of 51 cases (68.6%), FEV1 improved in 74% (20/27) and 41 of 52 had no adverse events; the authors conclude phage therapy appears generally safe and well tolerated and call for further well-designed studies given small, heterogeneous series.

VirHost Hunter uses phage tails and lysins with protein language models and vision transformers to assign hosts without requiring complete phage genomes.

Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil’s São Paulo and Espírito Santo agencies jointly supported research and knowledge transfer on antimicrobial resistance in intensive food-animal production. Projects could run up to 24 months, with agency-specific eligibility and budgets. The submission deadline was April 30, 2026, at 23:59 GMT−3.

Godsil, Wei and Meeske report in Nature Microbiology that the Listeria seeligeri type VI-A CRISPR system restricts the lytic cycle of temperate phages but tolerates prophage acquisition and interferes with prophage induction through a non-abortive mechanism. When induction is attempted, Cas13 activation forces prophage re-integration and so maintains lysogeny, and during polylysogenic induction it restricts only the targeted phage; the authors say this lets type VI hosts acquire potentially beneficial prophages while mitigating lysis.

A Bioengineering & Translational Medicine study from the University of Sydney spray-dried phage PEV1 with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) grades K15 to K100 and stored it for 180 days at 4, 22 and 40 °C and 15 to 53% relative humidity. At 33% relative humidity, high-molecular-weight PVPs (K40, K100) gave long-term stability while lower grades (K15, K25) lost 2–3 log10 of titre; degradation rose about tenfold above a water activity of 0.43, and at 40 °C and ≥43% RH titre losses were substantial even when the glass-transition offset exceeded 100 °C.

Damgaard and colleagues report in Communications Medicine that Bacteroides fragilis isolates from colorectal cancer (CRC) patients are infected with specific Caudoviricetes prophages significantly more often than controls, a finding made by pangenome-wide association in an isolate collection and validated in a faecal metagenome cohort of 877 individuals, where CRC patients were about twice as likely to have detectable levels of these phages (OR = 2.05). They describe it as the first link between one of the most implicated CRC driver bacteria and phages, and suggest phages as potential CRC biomarkers.

Patel and colleagues describe in Nature a 164-residue prophage-encoded defence protein, ring interacting pore 1 (Rip1), that is activated by the portal or small terminase proteins of infecting phages, oligomeric ring-shaped complexes essential for virion maturation. Rip1 uses these rings as a template to assemble into membrane-disrupting pores that inhibit phage virion assembly and cause premature death of the host cell; homologues are widely distributed across bacteria and defend against diverse phages.

An automated screening platform combining liquid-handling robotics, standardized phenotypic assays and computer-vision enumeration screens large phage collections against clinical bacterial strain panels and has assessed more than 3.8 million phage-bacteria reactions. As an example, a six-phage cocktail (LBP-EC01) for urinary tract infections was active in vitro against 96.4% of 356 uropathogenic E. coli isolates, and 37 of 38 isolates from participants in a Phase 2b trial were sensitive to it.

HepS, encoded by the Gifsy-1 prophage in Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, detects infection by Siphoviridae phages and cleaves tRNA anticodon loops to halt phage replication. Gifsy prophages evade self-targeting through a tail-tip variant, allowing them to spread while HepS protects the host from other phages.

Sikkema and colleagues describe in PNAS an engineering platform for the phiKMV-like Pseudomonas aeruginosa phage 41S1 built on one-pot High Complexity Golden Gate assembly (HC-GGA): the genome is divided into synthesizable DNA fragments that assemble in a high-accuracy reaction, and phages are rescued by transformation into P. aeruginosa PAO1 or E. coli cells. Point mutations, insertions, deletions and fluorescence reporter genes were generated with near 100% success and minimal screening, providing a chassis for phages that broadly target P. aeruginosa.

P2D1 tailocin from Dickeya dadantii was active against nine Pseudomonas strains among 480 soil and rhizosphere isolates. Six susceptible, nonpathogenic strains mitigated Dickeya-induced soft rot on potato; three related P. tensinigenes isolates caused rot on their own under permissive conditions.

A PLOS Biology study by Huss, Chitboonthavisuk, Meger and colleagues reports the dynamics between T7 bacteriophage and Escherichia coli aboard the International Space Station: phage activity was initially delayed in microgravity but ultimately successful, and de novo mutations in both phage and bacteria enhanced fitness there. Deep mutational scanning of the phage receptor binding domain differed between terrestrial and microgravity conditions, and T7 variants built from microgravity selections could productively infect uropathogenic E. coli resistant to wild-type T7 on Earth.

An International Journal of Infectious Diseases case report from the Military University Hospital Prague describes a 60-year-old woman with chronic MRSA vertebral osteomyelitis and non-removable spinal instrumentation who received 35 intravenous doses of individualized antistaphylococcal phage therapy, approved by the national regulatory authority. It was well tolerated, and six months after finishing phage therapy and stopping all antibiotics she remained in good clinical condition without signs of relapse.

Perfilyev and colleagues analysed 3.6 million bacterial genome assemblies from 1,226 species in Nature Microbiology and found 119,510 lytic phage genomes, which they call bacterial assembly-associated phage sequences, a roughly five-fold increase in phages with associated hosts. The set includes previously undescribed phage clusters, expands genera such as Seoulvirus from 16 to more than 300 members, and contains close relatives of therapeutically used lytic phages, suggesting that clinical isolate sequencing unknowingly archives potential phage candidates.

The transatlantic taskforce on antimicrobial resistance sets out research and regulatory priorities for phage therapy, including standardized susceptibility testing, experimental models, GMP and personalized-treatment criteria, and clearer routes to patient access.

Silverman and colleagues used RIL-seq to map RNA–RNA interactions in Escherichia coli during phage lambda infection, reported in Molecular Cell, and identified a phage-encoded small RNA, PreS (phage replication enhancer sRNA), embedded in the early left operon. PreS regulates essential host genes including dnaN, which encodes the DNA polymerase β sliding clamp, thereby enhancing DNA replication and fine-tuning the phage lytic cycle.

Silver nanoparticles templated by the Escherichia coli phage M13 showed unusually high potency against Gram-negative pathogens including E. coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Vibrio cholerae in vitro, and elicited resistance more than 10-fold more slowly than commercial silver nanoparticles. The authors attribute the activity to the nanoparticles' structure rather than to the phage.

Barril, Bardina and Cuadrado (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) propose a mathematical model of phage therapy with encapsulated bacteriophages in the gastrointestinal tract. Microcapsules protect phages from degradation in acidic environments such as the stomach, but phages inside them cannot infect bacteria, so efficient encapsulation needs microcapsules that are permeable to the phages they carry, a trade-off the model studies in different biological scenarios.

Biofilm-adapted mutants of Pseudomonas phage PE1, evolved on a cystic fibrosis-derived P. aeruginosa isolate, controlled biofilms better in vitro under conditions mimicking the CF lung. Mutations in tail fiber and baseplate genes improved adsorption and enabled recognition of truncated LPS variants (Meneses et al., Nature Communications).

Bacteriophage T4 capsid nanoparticles arrayed with a CD4-binding DARPin or the HIV-1 gp140 envelope trimer reactivated HIV-1 latency in J-Lat T cell models and primary T lymphocytes without global T cell activation or cytokine storm, independently of the PKC and NFAT pathways. The authors conclude that engineered non-infectious phages could be exploited for HIV-1 cure and targeted T cell therapies.

Paired bacterial and viral metagenomes from the guts of 49 individual honeybees, with a phage-bacteria interaction network built from CRISPR spacer matches and genome homology, show that viral and bacterial diversity are correlated, particularly at bacterial strain level and when the interaction network is considered (Ndiaye, Bonilla-Rosso, Mazel and Engel, Nature Communications).

A phage cocktail targeting Erwinia amylovora, the cause of fire blight, greatly reduced pathogen numbers and disease symptoms in inoculated pear flowers without significantly altering the resident floral microbiome (Holtappels, Wu, Koskella and Roh, Applied and Environmental Microbiology).

Entelli-02 is a five-phage cocktail built from The Alfred Hospital's decade-long isolate collection against multidrug-resistant Enterobacter cloacae complex; it covers 88% of the hospital's 206 isolates and reduced bacterial load in septicaemic mice by more than 99%. It was produced as a therapeutic-grade product ready for clinical use (Subedi et al., Nature Microbiology).

This guide helps researchers navigate tools for prophage detection, gene annotation, taxonomic classification, and downstream analysis. It highlights actively maintained tools available on the web or command line, including approaches for filamentous phages.

Jessica was interviewed on the Development & Research podcast, a new video interview series by biotech investor/economist Ross Rheingans-Yoo about people doing things differently in clinical trials and drug development.

They discussed operational challenges with phage therapy in academic versus clinical settings, why most trials fail due to execution issues rather than fundamental problems with phages, and more!

Check out Development & Research’s other interviews on clinical drug trial inefficiencies and those building the solutions — they are excellent!

The 6th International Conference on Bacteriophage Research & Antimicrobial Resistance is taking place November 12–13, 2025, in Varanasi, India.

Hosts: the Institute of Medical Sciences–Banaras Hindu University along with the Society for Bacteriophage Research and Therapy.

The conference aims to advance phage applications in health, environment, food, and antimicrobial resistance.

Abstracts are due September 10, 2025.

The Interdisciplinary Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance and Innovation (IMARI) is coming up early next year on January 28-30, 2026 in Las Vegas.   The meeting will bring together the top scientists, innovators, and cross-sector leaders to address one of health care’s most resistant problems: AMR. But we can’t do that without your contributions.   ASM and IDSA are looking for the latest research across the innovation pipeline – from uncovering emerging resistance mechanisms to advancing next-generation therapeutics and accelerating translation into clinical studies.   Mark your calendar for the meeting (registration will open soon!) and begin preparing your abstract to submit by October 1, 2025. I hope to see you – and your research – at the meeting!

Naia Novy (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and colleagues published a new paper on multiobjective machine learning design of phage specificity, showing deep learning can successfully design T7 phages with precisely tuned infectivity, specificity, and generality across diverse E. coli strains. They could even make T7 have the completely opposite host range compared to wild type, just by changing up its RBP according to the ML model's suggested sequence!

Shelby Andersen (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus) and colleagues published a new paper on systematic phage gene function interrogation, showing PhageMaP enables high-throughput screening of phage mutant libraries to decipher genotype-phenotype relationships.

Zhiying Zhang (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) and colleagues published a new paper on a membrane-embedded Kiwa defense supercomplex mechanism, showing KwaA and KwaB form transmembrane complexes that detect phage attachment and bind DNA to block replication without killing host cells.

Hannah Kapoor (Oregon State University) and colleagues published a new paper on phage-mediated TLR2 signaling against intracellular Mycobacterium abscessus, showing certain mycobacteriophages stimulate TLR2 signaling and NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages, significantly reducing intracellular M. abscessus survival through enhanced innate immune responses.

Amit Vikram (Intralytix) and colleagues published a new paper on phage cocktail biocontrol in wheat milling operations, showing significant E. coli O157:H7 reductions of 1.4-3.1 log CFU/g without affecting flour quality or baking properties.

The 6th International Conference on Bacteriophage Research & Antimicrobial Resistance is taking place November 12–13, 2025, in Varanasi, India.

Hosts: the Institute of Medical Sciences–Banaras Hindu University along with the Society for Bacteriophage Research and Therapy.

The conference aims to advance phage applications in health, environment, food, and antimicrobial resistance.

Abstracts are due September 10, 2025.

The Interdisciplinary Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance and Innovation (IMARI) is coming up early next year on January 28-30, 2026 in Las Vegas.   The meeting will bring together the top scientists, innovators, and cross-sector leaders to address one of health care’s most resistant problems: AMR. But we can’t do that without your contributions.   ASM and IDSA are looking for the latest research across the innovation pipeline – from uncovering emerging resistance mechanisms to advancing next-generation therapeutics and accelerating translation into clinical studies.   Mark your calendar for the meeting (registration will open soon!) and begin preparing your abstract to submit by October 1, 2025. I hope to see you – and your research – at the meeting!

Saima Aslam and colleagues at University of California, San Diego have announced Phase I/II phage vs placebo trial for recurrent E. coli UTIs in female kidney transplant recipients.

Jérémy Cherbuin (Lausanne University Hospital) and colleagues published a new paper on in vivo podovirus resistance via tarS mutations, showing tarS disruption causes phage 66 resistance in MSSA endocarditis through impaired wall teichoic acid β-GlcNAcylation.

Jiayu Gu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and colleagues published a new paper on crosstalk between inovirus core gene and accessory toxin-antitoxin system, showing RepG4 protein from Pf4 phage triggers degradation of PfpC antitoxin, coordinating polylysogeny in Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms.

Matt Walker (Columbia University) and colleagues published a new paper on RNA-guided flagellar remodeling by temperate phages, showing prophages use TldR transcription factors to alter host flagellar composition, enhancing bacterial motility, immune evasion, and gut colonization fitness.

Andrian Gajigan (University of Hawaii at Manoa) and colleagues published a new preprint on a dinoflagellate giant virus with a micron-length tail with visual similarities to a phage. They show PelV-1’s 459 kb genome encodes diverse metabolic genes and a 2.3 µm tail, expanding marine virus diversity.

Sophia Zborowsky (Institut Pasteur) and colleagues published a new paper on macrophage interference with phage therapy efficacy, showing alveolar macrophages reduce phage density through phagocytosis and adsorption inhibition, limiting therapeutic efficacy against Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia in mice.

Mengyu Li (University of Sydney) and colleagues published a new paper on long-term stability of inhalable phage powder formulations, showing spray-dried phage powders maintained viability over four years with 0.97-2.49 log titer reduction, with higher lactose concentrations providing better biological preservation despite decreased aerosol performance.

Zainab Dere (Florida State University) and colleagues published a new paper on optimal phage therapy control strategies, showing mathematically that phages can suppress antibiotic-resistant bacteria and offering a clinically translatable implementation framework.

Naïma Madi (McGill University) and colleagues published a new paper on ranking phage predation as dehydration determinant, showing the phage-to-pathogen ratio is a top classifier of severe dehydration in cholera patients, just behind age and admission site.

Martin Plymoth (Westmead Hospital, Australia) and colleagues published a new paper on Australian physician attitudes toward phage therapy, showing 97% of infectious disease specialists would consider using phage therapy meeting safety guidelines, with preferences for Gram-negative pathogens and cystic fibrosis applications.

Fatma Abdelrahman, founder of Women in Phage, invites phage scientists to complete her survey on women’s experiences and challenges in phage research. Share your insights to shape future support and inspire the next generation.

Phage Australia and colleagues has announced ISO 9001:2015 certification for its therapeutic phage biobank-to-bedside pipeline! ISO 9001 certification not only enhances Phage Australia's operational efficiency, but also ensures their products meet the rigorous safety and quality requirements required for phage therapy.

Join Evergreen 2025 Virtually!

Phagebiotics Research Foundation is excited to announce a virtual attendance option for the 26th Biennial Evergreen International Phage Meeting

📅 August 3–8, 2025 | 📍 Knoxville, Tennessee

In response to overwhelming demand and ongoing global travel challenges, we're making it possible for phage enthusiasts, researchers, and students around the world to participate in real time—no matter where you are.

For a registration fee of $125, virtual participants will receive: • Live-stream access to keynote sessions and oral presentations • Moderated Q&A access via WhatsApp, where you can engage directly with speakers through a live, dedicated group • Daily email updates with livestream links

💡 Your contribution supports scholarship opportunities for students and researchers from low- and middle-income countries, ensuring inclusive participation and continued innovation in the field of phage research.

🧬 Philanthropy from within is a powerful way to advance phage science.

🎟️ Register now

Once registered, we’ll send daily livestream links to the email address you provide. Please ensure it’s the best email for day-of access.

We look forward to having you join us online for Evergreen 2025 – Knoxville as we celebrate over five decades of scientific progress and global collaboration in phage research.

Tom Denes & Ria Kaelin, Co-Chairs, 26th Biennial Evergreen International Phage Meeting Phagebiotics Research Foundation

As part of the Evergreen Phage Meeting, Phages for Global Health is organizing a pre-conference workshop on phage purification technologies.

It will include six experts giving short presentations on different purification techniques that could be used to prepare phages for therapeutic applications.

If you aren't able to attend the conference in person, but are interested in attending this workshop virtually, please register via this online form.

Clara Torres-Barceló (University of Montpellier) and colleagues introduce the Phylogenetic Host-Range Index (PHRI) — a new metric to classify phages as specialists or generalists based on bacterial genetic diversity.

Using phages infecting Ralstonia spp. from Mauritius and Reunion, they reveal context-dependent virulence–host range trade-offs and show generalist phages are more frequently targeted by CRISPR-Cas systems. Their work bridges ecological theory and application in biocontrol.

Rabia Fatima (McMaster University) and colleagues have published a new review on phage-antibiotic synergy against Pseudomonas, synthesizing clinical successes and the mechanisms behind them while underscoring the tenuous links between current in-vitro assays and patient outcomes. They call for standardized protocols to bridge this gap.

Toni Nagy (University of Colorado, Boulder) and colleagues published a new paper on systematic identification of phage immune triggers, showing that screening 400 phage proteins across 72 E. coli strains revealed over 100 phage-host immune interactions, discovering novel defense system PD-T2-1 and identifying major capsid proteins as Avs8 activators.

Chujin Ruan (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag)) and colleagues published a new paper on how phage-mediated peripheral kill-the-winner facilitates the maintenance of costly antibiotic resistance.

Afif Jati (Monash University) and colleagues published a new paper in npj Viruses on how highly stable phages PIN1 and PIN2 have hallmarks of flagellotropic phages but infect immotile bacteria.

Phages 2025 Oxford — 15th International Conference

Dates: 01-02 September 2025

Email: PhageOxford@gmail.com

X: @PhageOxford; Hashtag: #PhgOx25

Important Dates: • Poster Abstracts: 15 Aug 2025 • Digital Posters and flash-talk videos: 25 Aug 2025 • Registration deadline: 29 Aug 2025

We warmly invite you to attend our 15th annual Oxford bacteriophage conference – the longest running phage conferences series in Europe, and the second longest running phage conference globally – which will be held on 01-02 September 2025 as a ‘virtual/in-person’ hybrid event at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, UK. With the rapidly growing interest in bacteriophage therapy to tackle antimicrobial resistance across the globe, we believe this conference will provide an excellent platform for the bacteriophage community to share new ideas, network with colleagues and develop new collaborations.

Taruna Anand and colleagues (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) created a new educational phage app, providing an educational resource on phage biology, detection techniques, properties, and applications in therapy for students, researchers, and professionals in microbiology.

Zhang and colleagues, including Franklin Nobrega, report in Cell that the widespread two-component Kiwa defence system, a transmembrane sensor KwaA and a DNA-binding effector KwaB, assembles into a large membrane-associated supercomplex (cryo-EM). On phage binding, KwaA senses infection at the membrane and KwaB binds the ejected phage DNA, inhibiting replication and late transcription without killing the host cell. The phage DNA-mimic protein Gam directly binds and inhibits KwaB, but co-expression with the Gam-targeted RecBCD system restores protection by Kiwa.

Join Evergreen 2025 Virtually!

Phagebiotics Research Foundation is excited to announce a virtual attendance option for the 26th Biennial Evergreen International Phage Meeting

📅 August 3–8, 2025 | 📍 Knoxville, Tennessee

In response to overwhelming demand and ongoing global travel challenges, we're making it possible for phage enthusiasts, researchers, and students around the world to participate in real time—no matter where you are.

For a registration fee of $125, virtual participants will receive: • Live-stream access to keynote sessions and oral presentations • Moderated Q&A access via WhatsApp, where you can engage directly with speakers through a live, dedicated group • Daily email updates with livestream links

💡 Your contribution supports scholarship opportunities for students and researchers from low- and middle-income countries, ensuring inclusive participation and continued innovation in the field of phage research.

🧬 Philanthropy from within is a powerful way to advance phage science.

🎟️ Register now

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We look forward to having you join us online for Evergreen 2025 – Knoxville as we celebrate over five decades of scientific progress and global collaboration in phage research.

Tom Denes & Ria Kaelin, Co-Chairs, 26th Biennial Evergreen International Phage Meeting Phagebiotics Research Foundation

As part of the Evergreen Phage Meeting, Phages for Global Health is organizing a pre-conference workshop on phage purification technologies.

It will include six experts giving short presentations on different purification techniques that could be used to prepare phages for therapeutic applications.

If you aren't able to attend the conference in person, but are interested in attending this workshop virtually, please register via this online form.

Looking for lytic phage against Streptococcus mutans strains NLML9, N66, and/or UA159. Bonus points if for a lytic phage against Streptococcus gordonii DL1! Thanks so much! — Amelia Schmidt

Phage Australia at Westmead Health Precinct is hosting a course called Phage Therapy 101 for Healthcare Professionals on Nov 14, 2025, aiming to equip prescribers with practical know-how for safe, genomics-guided phage therapy.

Recent microbiology graduate applying to graduate schools. Looking for programs focusing on ABR pathogens and/or molecular phage biology. Would greatly appreciate a chance to chat about opportunities in the field. Thanks! — Ivan

Marina Mahler (University of Otago) and colleagues published a new paper on arabinosyl-hydroxy-cytosine DNA modifications, showing that these modifications enable phages to evade DNA-targeting CRISPR-Cas and restriction systems while remaining sensitive to RNA-targeting defenses.

Per Kristian Thorén Edvardsen (Norwegian University of Life Sciences) and colleagues published a new paper on a cryptic prophage endolysin with muramidase activity. They solve its crystal structure and show 10,000-fold higher activity than lysozyme against P. aeruginosa peptidoglycan.

Xiang Hou (Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine) and colleagues published a new paper on gut phage-induced macrophage reprogramming, showing phages epigenetically prime macrophages via IL-10 to generate LPS-tolerant innate memory.

Xiang Hou (Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China) and colleagues published a new paper on a repressor, RptR, that controls Type I restriction modification system defence islands. They show that RptR binds TAGCTA repeats to silence the island until phage infection lifts repression.

Is passion enough for to keep our industry going? Jennifer Leeds (ex-Novartis; one of the microbiologists who had to help shut down Novartis’ infectious disease department) published a new perspective on antibiotic R&D talent drain, sharing her thoughts on how workforce collapse threatens future antimicrobial innovation pipelines, and what she sees as possible solutions.

Review by Choudhary, Bankole, McDuffee, Parajuli, Poudel, Balogh, Paret and Jones in Viruses on bacteriophages as biocontrol agents against plant bacterial diseases, as an alternative to antibiotics. It discusses barriers to implementation including environmental stability, delivery efficiency, host specificity and potential bacterial resistance, and highlights genetic-engineering and nanotechnology strategies to improve the stability, efficacy and adaptability of phage-based treatments.

The 9th International Conference on Bacteriology and Microbiology 2025 is a globally recognized scientific event bringing together researchers, microbiologists, healthcare professionals, and industry experts to explore the latest advancements in bacterial research and microbiological applications.

Themed "Microbial Frontiers: Exploring Bacteria in Health, Industry, and the Environment," this two-day event will feature keynote lectures, oral and poster presentations, workshops, and networking sessions. Topics will include antimicrobial resistance, environmental microbiology, microbial diagnostics, and microbiome research.

Head to Paris November 13-14, 2025 to connect with global experts and share insights that are shaping the future of microbiological science.

The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) are hosting the Interdisciplinary Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance and Innovation, taking place on January 28-30, 2026. The conference aims to advance antimicrobial drug discovery and development through cross-disciplinary collaboration among researchers, clinicians, industry leaders, and policymakers.

Precisio Biotix Therapeutics and the Mayo Clinic have announced their first patient dosed with ClyO staph lysin for multidrug-resistant prosthetic joint infection treatment.

Iddo Weiner (BiomX Ltd) and colleagues published a new paper on their nebulized phage cocktail for cystic fibrosis, showing BX004-A met safety endpoints and demonstrated potential reduction in P. aeruginosa sputum burden in first-in-human trial.

Claudia Campobasso (University of Pisa) and colleagues published a new paper on serum lipid inhibition of phage activity, showing human serum lipids impair Staphylococcus aureus phage infectivity in a strain-specific manner by coating bacterial cells rather than neutralizing phages directly.

Jennifer Sequoia (Stanford University) and colleagues published a new paper on phage DNA detection in umbilical cord blood, showing that phage DNA is present in human fetal circulation at birth, providing evidence of prenatal exposure to phage sequences.

Jiucheng Ma (Zhangjiagang Hospital, Soochow University) and colleagues published a new paper on novel phage therapy for MDR Pseudomonas aeruginosa, showing vB_PaeP_PZH3 effectively reduced bacterial loads and promoted wound healing in mouse infection models.

A phage display platform screens large libraries of chemically cyclized peptides carrying an affinity tag and a turn-on fluorescent reporter, so cleavage can be quantified in every selection round, to find selective substrates for a protease of interest. Applied to FAPα and DPP4, it identified substrates selective for each target, with potential as tools for basic biology and fluorescence image-guided surgery (Journal of the American Chemical Society).

Why don't we have phage therapy yet? We want to understand why. Come join the fun by tuning into the Podovirus podcast!

🎙️ Most recent episode: Dr. Marisa Azad, infectious disease physician at The Ottawa Hospital, shares her experience leading Canada's first-ever approved ‘n of 1’ phage therapy treatment for a prosthetic joint infection, and discusses what it took to make this happen!

🎧 Listen: Podovirus on Spotify

🎥 Watch: Podovirus on YouTube

Subscribe to get the next episodes!

🩺 Up next: We'll be talking to more clinicians, scientists and phage biotech executives about their experiences implementing phage therapy at their institutions, including the challenges and successes they've encountered along the way.

You’re invited to submit an abstract to the inaugural Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, chaired by Graham Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) and Robert (Chip) Schooley (UCSD).

Topics range from phage structure and assembly, evolution, and engineering to clinical trials, susceptibly testing, and host/immune responses.

This is organized by The International Antiviral Society–USA (IAS–USA), and will be held October 12-14, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Registration is open as of April 16, 2025! Check out the preliminary program here.

Submit your late-breaking abstract by Aug 13!

Presenting authors who are new investigators may qualify for a scholarship to cover the cost of registration.

Tolka AI Therapeutics has announced expanded access to patient-tailored phage therapy for M. abscessus infections. They're screening patients at five institutions for compassionate use where standard antibiotics have failed.

Dr. Stephen Vaughan (University of Calgary) successfully treated 76-year-old Boyd English's decade-long antibiotic-resistant hip infection using phage therapy. This is the first PJI phage treatment in Western Canada.

Masako Shimamura (Nationwide Children's Hospital and the Ohio State University) and colleagues published a new paper on dual β-lactam therapy for macrolide-resistant M. abscessus, showing successful treatment of two pediatric cases using multi-drug regimens including meropenem-amoxicillin combinations, with one case requiring additional phage therapy for hardware-associated infection clearance.

Kai Wang (Huazhong Agricultural University, China) and colleagues published a new paper on novel trimethoprim resistance genes in phage-plasmids, showing identification of two functional dfrA genes (dfrA50 and dfrA51) that confer trimethoprim resistance and are widely disseminated among pathogenic bacteria.

Jialin Xiang (Wuhan University) and colleagues published a new paper on type IV pili-mediated archaeal virus mutualism, showing that co-resident temperate viruses SNJ1 and SNJ2 establish tripartite mutualistic interactions with their haloarchaeon host through viral-encoded pili serving as receptors.

Michael Doud (University of California, San Diego) and colleagues published a new paper on AI applications in phage therapy, showing how AI can improve phage-host matching, discover novel phage genes, and guide development of synthetic therapeutic phages.

Jung and colleagues analysed the genomic, proteomic and functional characteristics of four bacteriophages (STP-1 to STP-4) targeting Salmonella Typhimurium, finding lysis-related genes (holin, endolysin, RZ-like spanins) and no genes linked to human toxicity or antibiotic resistance. A cocktail applied to milk at MOI 1,000 reduced bacterial counts by 2.11 log CFU/mL after 7 days, more than the same cocktails achieved on chicken breast in a previous study.

A first-in-human, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 1b/2a trial evaluated nebulized three-phage cocktail BX004-A in nine adults with cystic fibrosis and chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection. The trial met its primary safety and tolerability endpoints.

In mouse models of acute Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia, depleting alveolar macrophages shortened the survival of adult male mice without raising lung bacterial load, yet lung P. aeruginosa levels were significantly lower in macrophage-depleted than in immunocompetent mice during phage treatment. A mathematical model and experiments indicated that alveolar macrophages phagocytose therapeutic phages and reduce phage density in the lungs (Zborowsky, Weitz, Debarbieux and colleagues).

The Global Clinical Phage Rounds (GCPR) is an ongoing forum for discussing phage therapy cases and advances among clinicians and scientists.

The organizers (Greg German, Gina Suh, Jon Iredell and colleagues) are excited to announce a special open 90-minute ‘Journal Forum’ session for their 23rd meeting on June 25, 2025 (5 AM PDT / 8 AM EDT / 2 PM CET / 10 PM AEDT).

This session is open to the broader phage community—including patients, public, government, and industry—and will feature Drs. Jean Paul Pirnay, Sabrina Green, and Sarah Djebara discussing their foundational work on personalized, magistral phage therapy in Belgium.

Read their recent paper here and a popular write-up here.

Register to receive the Zoom link and recording.

Submit questions in advance or during the session here.

More info at https://phagerounds.com. Please share widely!

You’re invited to submit an abstract to the inaugural Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, chaired by Graham Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) and Robert (Chip) Schooley (UCSD).

Topics range from phage structure and assembly, evolution, and engineering to clinical trials, susceptibly testing, and host/immune responses.

This is organized by The International Antiviral Society–USA (IAS–USA), and will be held October 12-14, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Registration is open as of April 16, 2025! Check out the preliminary program here.

Submit your late-breaking abstract by Aug 13!

Presenting authors who are new investigators may qualify for a scholarship to cover the cost of registration.

Tolka AI Therapeutics has announced expanded access to patient-tailored phage therapy for M. abscessus infections. They're screening patients at five institutions for compassionate use where standard antibiotics have failed.

Precisio Biotix Therapeutics (Delaware-based biotech) announced a newly awarded Gates Foundation grant for engineered lysin discovery targeting bacterial vaginosis.

Alexander Sulakvelidze's team at Intralytix announced U.S. patent allowance for Campylobacter phages, showing strengthened intellectual property protection for CampyShield™, an FDA GRAS-affirmed antimicrobial preparation targeting foodborne Campylobacter in raw meat and poultry products.

Victoria Harman-McKenna (University of Calgary) and colleagues published a new paper on intestinal protection using mycobacteriophages, showing that lining the small intestine with phages protects against Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis and eliminates fecal shedding.

Geunsoo Jung, Hyunwoo Zin (Sejong University, Korea) and colleagues published a new paper on characterization of a plasmid-dependent DNA phage, showing it selectively targets E. coli harboring conjugative plasmids and reduces their abundance without disrupting overall gut microbial diversity.

Katrina Black (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia) and colleagues published a new paper on resolving a T1-like bacteriophage outbreak, showing how targeted deletion of an LptD loop conferred resistance to the phage without compromising E. coli growth or protein expression.

You’re invited to submit an abstract to the inaugural Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, chaired by Graham Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) and Robert (Chip) Schooley (UCSD).

Topics range from phage structure and assembly, evolution, and engineering to clinical trials, susceptibly testing, and host/immune responses.

This is organized by The International Antiviral Society–USA (IAS–USA), and will be held October 12-14, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Registration is open as of April 16, 2025! Check out the preliminary program here.

Submit your late-breaking abstract by Aug 13!

Presenting authors who are new investigators may qualify for a scholarship to cover the cost of registration.

Tolka AI Therapeutics has announced expanded access to patient-tailored phage therapy for M. abscessus infections. They're screening patients at five institutions for compassionate use where standard antibiotics have failed.

Proteon Pharmaceuticals (Łódź, Poland) shared that BAFASAL®, its phage-based feed additive for poultry, has received a majority vote from EU Member States, moving it closer to EU authorisation. Once finalized, it will become the first phage-based zootechnical feed additive approved for use in poultry across the EU.

Vida Štilec (University of Ljubljana) and colleagues published a new paper on high quality preparation and pharmacokinetics of S. epidermidis phage COP-80B in a mouse model. They saw that injection into the joint provided local phage presence in the joint for several days, while intraperitoneally injected phages did not reach the joint space.

Taylor Andrews (Rutgers University) and colleagues published a new paper on re-expansion of host range in RNA phage phi6, showing specialized phi6 strains readily regained broader host ranges through both reversion and compensatory mutations in the P3 spike protein.

Ortal Yerushalmy (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and colleagues published a new paper on phage susceptibility diversity in CF Burkholderia isolates, showing mixed populations of phage-sensitive and phage-resistant Burkholderia in 75% of CF sputum samples tested.

Cristian Crisan (Emory University) and colleagues published a new paper on phages lysing cystic fibrosis S. maltophilia isolates, describing isolation both specialist and generalist phages that infect diverse S. maltophilia strains.

A PNAS study isolated 66 phage escape mutants against 13 plasmid-encoded lactococcal antiphage systems and found 15 mutated genes, and proposes that the Audmula system modifies the host cell wall, delaying lysis and release of progeny phages. The authors note the findings benefit the dairy industry and may be useful for biotechnological or biomedical applications.

You’re invited to submit an abstract to the inaugural Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, chaired by Graham Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) and Robert (Chip) Schooley (UCSD).

Topics range from phage structure and assembly, evolution, and engineering to clinical trials, susceptibly testing, and host/immune responses.

This is organized by The International Antiviral Society–USA (IAS–USA), and will be held October 12-14, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Registration is open as of April 16, 2025! Check out the preliminary program here.

Submit your late-breaking abstract by Aug 13!

Presenting authors who are new investigators may qualify for a scholarship to cover the cost of registration.

The World Health Organization published a new report on phage therapy evidence, showing phages can enhance antibiotic treatments against resistant bacteria as part of a One Health approach.

Alexander Harms was interviewed on the PhageCast podcast about the Basel Phage Collection, basic science insights from E. coli phages, and how these findings can predict phage traits.

Tolka AI Therapeutics has announced expanded access to patient-tailored phage therapy for M. abscessus infections. They're screening patients at five institutions for compassionate use where standard antibiotics have failed.

Hello,

I'm looking for phage cocktails for phage therapy to treat and study Sinusitis infections

"Streptococcus pneumoniae Haemophilus influenzae Moraxella catarrhalis Staphylococcus aureus Pseudomonas aeruginosa"

Please email on amylaurence1989@googlemail.com, Thanks

A much awaited regulatory guidance document! The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has announced new guidance for developing phage therapies in the UK.

The European Research Executive Agency has announced €7.3 billion in EU funding for research through Horizon Europe 2025 to support research careers and competitiveness.

Atif Khan and Hiren Joshi (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India) published a new research paper on selectively enriching and characterizing stress-tolerant phages for food biocontrol.

Bradley Cook (Cytophage Technologies) and Alexander Hynes (McMaster University) published a new paper on re-evaluating phage therapy criteria. They examine three commonly applied criteria for excluding phages from therapy: the lack of virulence/antibiotic resistance, the inability to transduce, and being strictly lytic. For each, they assess the risk posed, tools for determining the criteria, and the potential impact.

Eleanor Rand (Harvard Medical School) and colleagues published a new paper on a targeted phage discovery method called Phage DisCo, a co-culture-based phage screening technique. Using isogenic, fluorescently tagged bacterial strains, they can rapidly identify phages with specific infection traits, streamlining targeted phage isolation from complex samples.

Hi everyone,

I'm a researcher based in Argentina working on a phage-based biocontrol project targeting spoilage bacteria in industrial fermentations, particularly lactic acid bacteria like Lactobacillus plantarum, L. fermentum, and L. brevis. Despite screening a wide variety of environmental samples, we have not yet observed any plaques on our target strains. We’d be really grateful for any advice or insights regarding common pitfalls when working with phages for Lactobacillus spp.

Thanks in advance for your help, Cecilia.

Reminder to register for the Phage Protein Meeting, taking place in Ghent, Belgium, on September 10-11, 2025. This interdisciplinary conference will bring together experts working with phage lysins/endolysins, tail fibers, tailspikes, depolymerases, and tailocins, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange for applications in human and veterinary health, food conservation, and beyond.

https://phageproteinmeeting.ugent.be/

• Registration/abstract submission: until June 15, 2025 • Late registration: from June 16, 2025

Daniel Nelson (nelsond@umd.edu) on behalf of the organizing committee

Stephen Tang (Columbia University) and colleagues published a new paper on protein-primed homopolymer synthesis, showing a novel bacterial antiviral defense mechanism involving synthesis of poly-dA DNA triggered by phage infection, driven by a reverse transcriptase that likely uses its own tyrosine residues to prime synthesis.

Meaghan Castledine (University of Exeter) and colleagues published a new paper on interactions between phages and macrophages, showing macrophages reduced phage efficacy and increased bacterial phage resistance, potentially explaining variable phage therapy outcomes in patients.

Liana Merk (Harvard University) and colleagues published a new paper on prevalence of group II introns in phage genomes, showing group II introns are widely present in phages from diverse phylogenetic backgrounds, contrary to previous assumptions.

Nathan Novy (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and colleagues published a new paper on multiobjective learning and design of phage specificity, showing deep learning can enhance T7 phage infectivity and specificity toward diverse bacterial strains.

Tianjing She (Nanjing Agricultural University) and colleagues published a new paper on phage-mediated gene transfer in Salmonella, showing horizontal transfer of virulence genes in Salmonella enterica with regulatory feedback from the host.

Rand and colleagues present Phage DisCo (phage discovery by co-culture) in mSystems: bacterial strains that are isogenic except for fluorescent tags and one perturbation expected to affect phage infection are co-cultured on the same screening plate, so differential plaquing, visible by fluorescence, implies the perturbation prevents infection. They validate the method with characterized phages and show it can target phages from receptors to phage defence systems, without isolating and characterizing many redundant phages.

Review by Feng et al. in Precision Clinical Medicine on the human gut virome, 90%-95% of which is phages. It examines how the virome develops and how diet, environment, host genetics and immunity shape it, its associations with various diseases, its interactions with gut bacteria and the immune system, and emerging clinical applications.

The International Antiviral Society-USA (IAS-USA) is hosting a webinar called 'An Introduction to Bacteriophages: Basic Science and Clinical Applications', taking place on June 30, 2025.

This webinar consists of 2 lectures by Graham F. Hatfull, PhD, who will review the basic science of phages, and Robert T. Schooley, MD, who will provide an overview of the clinical applications.

It's designed for clinical decision makers and those new to the topic, and will prove information to those who have some experience in this field and would like a review of these concepts.

Hello phage community! 😃 We’re looking for a T-series E. coli K-12 phage (e.g., T2, T4, T7) engineered to express a red fluorescent protein (e.g., mCherry) fused to a capsid or tail protein — to track intact virions by microscopy. No inducible promoters — we want to see the phage, not just expression! Tracking during infection also welcome.

Got leads or willing to collaborate? Contact me: dany.huelgs@gmail.com

Bio Lab in Korea is currently seeking Paenibacillus relictisesami phages and Lysinibacillus macroides phages. If you have access to these phages and are willing to share them, please get in touch. We would greatly appreciate your support.

• Jenny Park (jennyp@daesang.com)

Another successful phage therapy clinical trial! Armata Pharmaceuticals and colleagues has announced positive topline results from its Phase 1b/2a trial of AP-SA02 for S. aureus bacteremia.

Lukeman Kharrat (San Diego State University) and colleagues published a new paper on phage immunogenicity assessment, showing a novel Bacteriophage Risk Index to predict CpG-mediated immune activation potential of phages and guide selection of therapeutic candidates with optimized immunogenic profiles.

There’s a lot of improvement we can engineer into phages! Phil Huss (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and colleagues published a new paper on engineering phages using metagenomic data, showing how deep mining of metagenomic motifs can be used to engineer novel phages with desired properties.

David Sünderhauf (University of Exeter) and colleagues published a new paper on CRISPR-Cas in plasmid competition, showing CRISPR-Cas benefits plasmids defensively but is limited by competitor toxin-antitoxin systems when horizontally transferred.

Chase Morgan (University of California San Diego), Haley Atkins (Loyola University Chicago) and colleagues published a new review on phage therapy for urinary tract infections, showing phage therapy for this indication is promising, but needs more research on dosing, administration routes, and interactions with the urinary microbiome before clinical use.

Adams and colleagues report in Nature Microbiology that the two genetic signatures defining the West African–South American (WASA) lineage of Vibrio cholerae, responsible for the 1991-2001 Latin American cholera epidemic, encode multiple anti-phage defence systems. The WASA-1 prophage encodes an abortive-infection system, WonAB, that makes the lineage resistant to the predatory vibriophage ICP1, and genes on Vibrio seventh pandemic island II encode a modification-dependent restriction system and a new Shedu-family member active against vibriophage X29; the authors propose these defences contributed to the lineage's success.

The European Commission’s 2025 call sought multicentre, multinational randomised trials of phage therapies for difficult-to-treat bacterial infections, alone or alongside standard care. The call is closed; its deadline was September 16, 2025. FundsforNGOs lists a €45 million topic budget and contributions around €15 million.

She et al. retrieved 5,178 viral sequences encoding 12 Salmonella enterica virulence genes from the IMG/VR database and compared them with 466,136 S. enterica genomes from EnteroBase. Virulence genes including iacP, mgtB, misL and fliC were widely distributed in phages and S. enterica across North America, Europe and Asia, and overexpression of the highly conserved regulator csrA inhibited prophage cyclization and release by upregulating the prophage cI repressor.

You’re invited to submit an abstract to the inaugural Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, chaired by Graham Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) and Robert (Chip) Schooley (UCSD).

Topics range from phage structure and assembly, evolution, and engineering to clinical trials, susceptibly testing, and host/immune responses.

This is organized by The International Antiviral Society–USA (IAS–USA), and will be held October 12-14, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Registration is open as of April 16, 2025! Check out the preliminary program here.

Submit your late-breaking abstract by Aug 13!

Presenting authors who are new investigators may qualify for a scholarship to cover the cost of registration.

W. Borges (Yale University) and colleagues published a new abstract on personalized phage therapy for cystic fibrosis, showing an LPS-5 and TIVP-H6 phage cocktail decreased P. aeruginosa biofilm formation and reduced IL-6 secretion for 15 days after treatment. They saw deleterious effects on biofilm formation did not persist at day 27, suggesting a clinical window for phage retreatment.

Monyque Karoline de Paula Silva (Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials) and colleagues published a new paper on deep learning in phage discovery, showing how AI enhances phage research through improved vMAG reconstruction, host-interaction prediction, and metagenomic analysis of viral diversity.

Robert Brzozowski, Amelia Schmidt (University of Montana) and colleagues published a new paper on prophage-encoded sRNA limiting lytic phage infection, showing a lambdoid prophage in adherent-invasive E. coli encodes an sRNA that downregulates maltodextrin transport genes, reducing phage adsorption and protecting against lytic infection in vitro and in vivo.

Jyot Antani (Yale University) and colleagues published a new paper on evolutionary responses of E. coli to flagellotropic phage, showing bacteria evolved resistance through flagellar mutations while retaining motility, with some strains exhibiting trade-offs and others trade-ups in swimming ability.

Xiaolin Hou (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and colleagues published a new paper on advances in engineered phages for disease treatment, showing recent progress in enhancing phage targeting, stability, and synergistic combinations, across antibacterial therapy, tumor therapy, and vaccine development.

You’re invited to submit an abstract to the inaugural Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, chaired by Graham Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) and Robert (Chip) Schooley (UCSD).

Topics range from phage structure and assembly, evolution, and engineering to clinical trials, susceptibly testing, and host/immune responses.

This is organized by The International Antiviral Society–USA (IAS–USA), and will be held October 12-14, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Registration is open as of April 16, 2025! Check out the preliminary program here.

Submit your late-breaking abstract by Aug 13!

Presenting authors who are new investigators may qualify for a scholarship to cover the cost of registration.

Alexander Perfilyev (University of Copenhagen) and colleagues published a new preprint on discovering lytic phages in bacterial genomes, showing over 100,000 complete lytic phage genomes in bacterial assemblies, challenging assumptions and revealing a vast untapped reservoir of potentially therapeutic phages.

Fernando Gordillo Altamirano (Monash University) and colleagues published a new paper on phage therapy failure mechanisms, showing pre-existing anti-prophage antibodies and bacterial heteroresistance contributed to treatment failure in a patient with chronic Bordetella bronchialis infection.

Sarah Macdowell (The Ohio State University) and colleagues published a new paper on meropenem interactions with P. aeruginosa phages. They found that phages PEV2 and ΦKMV reduce bacterial burden in vitro and ex vivo, with enhanced efficacy when combined with meropenem.

Alexandre Boulay (Ghent University) and colleagues published a new paper on segmentation of phage endolysin domains, showing SPAED achieves higher accuracy than existing tools by using AlphaFold's predicted aligned error matrix for hierarchical clustering of protein residues.

Seyoung Ko (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Korea) and colleagues published a new paper on deep learning-guided structural analysis of phage KPP105. Structural similarity analysis showed how its receptor binding protein facilitates interactions with host receptors and distinguishes between strains.

You’re invited to submit an abstract to the inaugural Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, chaired by Graham Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) and Robert (Chip) Schooley (UCSD).

Topics range from phage structure and assembly, evolution, and engineering to clinical trials, susceptibly testing, and host/immune responses.

This is organized by The International Antiviral Society–USA (IAS–USA), and will be held October 12-14, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Registration is open as of April 16, 2025! Check out the preliminary program here.

Submit your late-breaking abstract by Aug 13!

Presenting authors who are new investigators may qualify for a scholarship to cover the cost of registration.

In Episode 45 of the International Antiviral Society (IAS-USA)’s Going anti-Viral podcast, Dr. Michael Saag speaks with Dr. Graham F. Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) about Bacteriophages for the Treatment of Antimicrobial-resistant Bacterial Infections. They explore the promise and complexity of phage therapy against AMR pathogens, from phage diversity and clinical application to the challenges of scaling production and engineering synthetic phages for precision treatment. Don’t miss the inaugural Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, which IAS-USA is hosting in October of this year!

Benjamin Chan (Yale University) and colleagues published a new paper on outcomes from the first 9 adult CF compassionate use cases treated with personalized inhaled P. aeruginosa phage therapy at Yale. 5-18 days after phage therapy, they saw that sputum Pseudomonas decreased by multiple logs without altering sputum microbiome, and saw evidence of trade-offs that decreased Pseudomonas antibiotic resistance and bacterial virulence.

Emily Armbruster (University of California San Diego) and colleagues published a new paper on sequential membrane- and protein-bound organelles in phage infection, showing chimalliviruses use two organelles - an early membrane-bound vesicle and a protein-based nucleus - to compartmentalize their genomes during infection.

Tao Yang (Zhejiang University) and colleagues published a new paper on tumor-homing phage nanofibers for targeted cancer therapy, showing phage-templated platinum nanozymes can enhance photodynamic therapy of breast tumors by alleviating hypoxia.

Hollyn Franklin (Virginia Tech) and colleagues published a new paper on a phage-conditional mouse model, showing acriflavine can deplete gut phages without significantly impacting bacteria, allowing study of phage impacts in conventionally colonized mice.

Nadezhda Kolupaeva (State Research Center for Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Russia) and colleagues published a new paper on diverse prophage content in A. baumannii and K. pneumoniae bloodstream isolates from patients in the ICU, including phage-derived depolymerases and esterases encoded in the genomes of the isolates.

Byers et al. report that telomere phages, which replicate their genomes as linear extrachromosomal elements, are widely distributed in bacteria and highly prevalent in Klebsiella species. In phage-host cells only a small set of phage proteins is expressed, including a toxin, the telocin, that kills other Klebsiella strains; the authors discuss using telocins for precision editing of microbial populations.

You’re invited to submit an abstract to the inaugural Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, chaired by Graham Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) and Robert (Chip) Schooley (UCSD).

Topics range from phage structure and assembly, evolution, and engineering to clinical trials, susceptibly testing, and host/immune responses.

This is organized by The International Antiviral Society–USA (IAS–USA), and will be held October 12-14, 2025, in Washington, DC.

Registration is open as of April 16, 2025! Check out the preliminary program here.

Submit your late-breaking abstract by Aug 13!

Presenting authors who are new investigators may qualify for a scholarship to cover the cost of registration.

Sabrina Green (KU Leuven) wrote a great perspective piece for Nature Microbiology on communicating the promise of phage therapy, her tips on how best to use social media (when memes? when papers?) to get more people to understand its promise and limits, and why she always makes time for science communication. A really nice reminder for us all!

Also — I had no idea about the ‘hidden-locked-door-in-the-lab saga’ that jumpstarted Sabrina’s super successful twitter account!

Lizett Ortiz de Ora (University of California, Irvine) and colleagues published a new paper on visualizing phage transmission dynamics in zebrafish gut microbiomes, showing antibiotics triggered waves of interbacterial phage transmission and sudden shifts in gut community ecology.

Hui Yue (Zhejiang University) and colleagues published a new paper on filamentous phages as tumor-targeting immunotherapeutic agents, showing engineered phages can home to tumors and block PD-1/PD-L1 interaction for targeted cancer immunotherapy without systemic side effects.

Jacopo Marchi (University of Maryland) and colleagues published a new paper on stable coexistence of phages and bacteria, showing how spatial interactions and chemotaxis enable long-term coexistence and dispersal of virulent phages with migrating bacterial hosts.

Jagdev Singh (The Children's Hospital at Westmead) and colleagues published a new paper on safety of bronchoscopic and nebulised phage administration, showing no adverse events and improved lung function in two adolescents with cystic fibrosis receiving phage therapy for Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection.

Phagos and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are hosting a hackathon called Phagos x AWS — Hackdays 2025, taking place on May 14-15th, 2025. The event aims to leverage AI and LLMs for phage genome analysis, addressing antibiotic resistance and infectious diseases in animal farming. Participants can join on-site in Paris or remotely.

Jerry Nick (National Jewish Health) and colleagues published a new paper on trial design for phage therapy against M. abscessus in cystic fibrosis, showing a standardized protocol to assess efficacy and safety of phage treatment in refractory infections.

Jeremy Barr (Monash University) published a new perspective on T-series phages as reductionist models, discussing how these phages have shaped the field of microbiology and continue to be important research tools.

Amalie Høgh Eichler (University of Copenhagen) and colleagues published a new paper on PQS stability in phage lysates, showing PQS is highly stable in phage lysates for up to a year and can induce quorum sensing responses when carried over, potentially confounding phage-host interaction studies.

The Online Citizen wrote a piece on Singapore General Hospital's successful use of phage therapy to treat a patient using phages, which allowed the patient to avoid high-risk surgery.

Ortiz de Ora and colleagues created Phollow, a live-imaging approach that tracks phage replication and spread in situ at single-virion resolution by marking virions with distinct fluorescent proteins as they assemble in newly infected cells. Used in optically transparent zebrafish to visualize phage outbreaks in the vertebrate gut, it showed that virions from a zebrafish-derived Plesiomonas strain, but not a human-derived E. coli, rapidly disseminate to the liver and brain, and that antibiotics triggered waves of interbacterial transmission and sudden shifts in gut community ecology.

A Cell paper reports the complete structure and atomic model of mycobacteriophage Bxb1, a virus of Mycobacterium smegmatis, including the capsid, tail tube and tail-tip assembly. Cryoelectron tomography of phage bound to M. smegmatis shows the structural transitions as the phage binds the cell surface and crosses the cell wall to transfer DNA into the cytoplasm.

Has anybody got borrelial phage φBB-1? We'd also need a recommendation for correct concentration, dosage and administration. Thank you all! — Barbara Brenner

Qeen Biotechnologies (in partnership with Cellexus, CPI, University of Exeter, NRC Canada, and Unity Health Toronto) was awarded a $2M CAD grant through the Canada–UK: Biomanufacturing of Biologics and Advanced Therapies program to develop a scalable GMP manufacturing platform for phage therapies.

Michael Shamash (McGill University) and colleagues published a new preprint on improving gut virome comparisons, showing that incorporating predicted phage host information enhances the analysis and comparison of gut viromes across different studies.

Amandine Maurin (University of Montpellier) and colleagues published a new paper on convergent evolution in a Salmonella phage, showing expanded host range and increased virulence evolved through parallel mutations, particularly in genes for nucleases, dUTPase, and caudal proteins.

Giuseppina Mariano, Justin Deme (University of Glasgow & National Cancer Institute) and colleagues published a new paper on structural and mechanistic insights into Zorya phage defense systems, showing ZorAB forms an ion-driven motor complex that recruits nuclease effectors to damage host DNA and provide population-wide immunity against phages.

Nanami Kubota (University of Pittsburgh) and colleagues published a new preprint on filamentous phage exploitation of bacteria, showing that mutant Pf phages can drive P. aeruginosa populations to lower fitness through superinfection and miniphage invasion.

A review of recent advances in using bacteriophages to treat the most common bacterial infectious diseases of cultured fish, shellfish and crustaceans. It concludes that the documented research supports phage therapy in aquaculture but that more studies are needed, as the field is still mostly at the scientific stage.

Dear Phage Protein enthusiast,

We are pleased to invite you to The Phage Protein Meeting, September 10-11, 2025 in Ghent, Belgium.

The Phage Protein Meeting is an interdisciplinary conference organized by academics and dedicated to advancing the field of phage proteins for biocontrol. This event will bring together academic researchers and professionals who are actively working with phage proteins such as phage lysins, tail fibers, tailspikes, depolymerases, and tailocins.

Sincerely, Daniel Nelson on behalf of the Organizing Committee

Huge milestone alert! BiomX has announced successful Phase II clinical trial results for their BX211 phage product against diabetic foot osteomyelitis!

Subscribe to the Podovirus podcast to learn more — we'll be interviewing BiomX CEO Jonathan Solomon later this month!

Marian Dominguez-Mirazo (Georgia Institute of Technology) and colleagues published a new preprint on inferring phage trait heterogeneity from population data, showing latent period variation in cyanophages exceeds that of coliphages and burst size variability is largely explained by latent period variation.

Jason Wilson (University of Sheffield) and colleagues published a new paper on structural analysis of a phage that penetrates bacterial S-layers, showing the phage has an unusually long tail that contracts less than other phages, likely enabling S-layer penetration without enzymatic activity.

Isabella Romano (University of New Mexico) and colleagues published a new paper on RNA phage-derived vaccines against heroin and fentanyl, showing the vaccines elicit high-titer antibodies and protect against opioid-induced effects in mice after two doses.

José Penadés (Imperial College London) and colleagues published a new review on phage satellite genetics, ecology and evolution, diving into how these elements impact bacterial evolution and virulence.

This review surveys lytic bacteriophages and related approaches being studied against antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae.

Bacteriophages of the Chimalliviridae family are shown to use two successive compartments during infection: a membrane-bound early phage infection (EPI) vesicle that encloses the injected genome and expresses early genes, and the protein-lattice phage nucleus to which the DNA is transferred before genome replication begins. The authors describe the EPI vesicle as a transcriptionally active, membrane-bound organelle formed by a prokaryotic virus.

Dear Phage Protein enthusiast,

We are pleased to invite you to The Phage Protein Meeting, September 10-11, 2025 in Ghent, Belgium.

The Phage Protein Meeting is an interdisciplinary conference organized by academics and dedicated to advancing the field of phage proteins for biocontrol. This event will bring together academic researchers and professionals who are actively working with phage proteins such as phage lysins, tail fibers, tailspikes, depolymerases, and tailocins.

Sincerely, Daniel Nelson on behalf of the Organizing Committee

Li Yuping (University of California, San Francisco) and colleagues published a new paper on a bacterial immune system targeting jumbo phages, showing it disrupts an early phage infection compartment to block replication.

Brittany Supina (University of Alberta) and colleagues published a new paper on isolation and characterization of a novel Burkholderia jumbo phage, showing it uses flagella as a receptor, controls rice seedling rot, and steers B. glumae toward reduced virulence in rice seedlings.

Himanshu Batra (Catholic University of America) and colleagues published a new preprint on targeted phage T4-based nanoparticles, showing these nanoparticles can reactivate latent HIV-1 in CD4+ T cells without causing global T cell activation or cytokine storm.

Tamsin Redgwell (Copenhagen University Hospital) and colleagues published a new paper on prophage induction in infant gut microbiomes, showing most prophages were actively induced and may modulate host bacterial functionality through accessory genes.

Arne Echterhof (Stanford University School of Medicine) and colleagues published a new preprint on modeling whole-body phage distribution in mice, using Physiologically-based Pharmacokinetic Modeling. They show rapid elimination of phage and the need for multi-dose regimens to maintain detectable phage concentrations.

Saavedra, Silva-Santos, Duarte and Azevedo describe in Journal of Chromatography A a purification workflow for bacteriophage preparations built around anion-exchange chromatography, using phage T4 and E. coli K12 as models. Treating with alkaline phosphatase before chromatography reduces the net negative charge of endotoxins so they separate from phages; the best workflow gave 98.8% endotoxin removal (20 U/mL enzyme then a quaternary-amine column), titres up to 1.26 × 10^11 PFU/mL and recoveries up to 45.1%, and some preparations would suit intravenous use as far as endotoxin content goes.

The Rao lab at Stanford is seeking Mycobacterium phages for testing the new point-of-care phage-based diagnostic device they are developing. If anyone has any to share, or wants to collaborate, please reach out to Dr. Jianghong Rao!

Yves Briers (Ghent University, Belgium) and colleagues are hosting The Phage Protein Meeting September 10-11, 2025.

The event is for researchers working with phage proteins such as phage lysins, tail fibers, tailspikes, depolymerases, and tailocins, who want to develop these proteins for controlling bacterial infections, from diagnostic to therapeutic applications across human and veterinary health, food conservation, and other applications for biocontrol.

The Belgian Society for Viruses of Microbes (BSVoM) is hosting their 4th Annual Symposium on Phage Research, taking place on September 12, 2025 (the day after the Phage Protein Meeting, in the same city!).

Particularly, there will be also a session on clinical phage therapy under the Belgian magistral phage legislation. Ghent has a beautiful historic city centre for sightseeing and touristic hotspots like Bruges, Antwerp and Brussels are located within a 30 min train trip. As such all phage lovers can have a phantastic trip to Belgium full of phage updates and sightseeing!

The Rao lab at Stanford is seeking Mycobacterium phages for testing the new point-of-care phage-based diagnostic device they are developing. If anyone has any to share, or wants to collaborate, please reach out to Dr. Jianghong Rao!

Atif Khan published a new blog post on the Phage Collection Project blog about phage-based biofouling control in power plants. He explains how phages can eliminate biofilms that encourage barnacle larvae settlement, offering a sustainable alternative to chlorine-based treatments.

Kate Harding (University of Otago) and colleagues published a new paper on genome-wide identification of bacterial genes for nucleus-forming phage infection, showing flagella and lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis genes are major contributors to phage resistance, alongside other cellular pathways also used by non-jumbo phages.

Amit Rimon (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and colleagues published a new paper on comparing methods for assessing phage activity against biofilms, showing several promising techniques including calorimetry, extracellular ATP measurement, and modified CFU assays for evaluating phage efficacy in biofilm infections.

Sisi Lin (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) and colleagues published a new paper on coating phage-infected bacteria with polymers, showing this preserves phage vitality and improves therapeutic outcomes in mouse models of bacterial infection compared to uncoated phages.

Su Jin Jo (Seoul National University) and colleagues published a paper on a new model they've developed for standardizing and optimizing an agar plate-based method for phage production based on plaque size and inoculum concentration.

Hanzada Nour El-Din (National Research Council Canada) and colleagues published a new paper on isolation and characterization of phages against Pseudomonas aeruginosa from cystic fibrosis patients, showing four phages with broad host range and potential for phage therapy against early and chronic P. aeruginosa infections.

In vitro, curcumin (400 ug/mL) combined with the newly isolated phage vB_AbaSI_1 reduced multidrug-resistant A. baumannii to undetectable levels within 1 hour, and a double dose extended this to 5 hours, whereas phage alone rebounded within 3 hours. Synergy occurred only with phage-susceptible strains; the authors say future work will engineer the phage to make it therapeutically acceptable.

Zachary Baker (Virginia Tech) and colleagues published a new paper on engineered phages for gut protein delivery, showing that T4 phages can be modified to express therapeutic proteins released during bacterial lysis in the mammalian gut, reducing inflammation in colitis and obesity models.

Richard Henshaw (Tufts University) and colleagues published a new paper on chemotaxis of marine bacteria toward virus-infected cyanobacteria, showing that metabolites released during phage infection attract heterotrophic bacteria, likely influencing carbon cycling in marine ecosystems.

Maciej Żaczek (Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy) and colleagues published a new paper on Polish perceptions of phage therapy, showing awareness of phage therapy varies significantly by education level, with 84.4% of respondents willing to try phage treatment despite limited knowledge about phages.

Tanita Wein (Weizmann Institute of Science) and colleagues published a new paper on bacterial CARD domains in anti-phage defense, showing that CARD domains are essential for protease-mediated activation of bacterial gasdermins that trigger cell death upon phage infection, suggesting an ancient immune mechanism conserved from bacteria to humans.

Siti Adil (La Trobe University) and colleagues published a new phage purification methods comparison paper, showing Triton X-100 was most effective for endotoxin removal and phage recovery compared to CsCl ultracentrifugation and endotoxin removal resin columns.

I'm a chronic prostatitis patient who has tried Georgian & Russian phages before. While they did help, there was no lasting effect. I studied microbiology and so have faith in phages. I'd be looking for a place that could treat me, including by intra-prostatic injections/other delivery methods.

Main culprits: E. faecalis and K. pneumoniae, both pretty resistant but still susceptible to some antibiotics - all but gentamicin have been tried, including rare or last resort antibiotics and combinations, such as linezolid or thiamphenicol, etc.

https://chronicprostatitis.blogspot.com/p/feedback.html

I'm a chronic prostatitis patient who has tried Georgian & Russian phages before. While they did help, there was no lasting effect. I studied microbiology and so have faith in phages. I'd be looking for a place that could treat me, including by intra-prostatic injections/other delivery methods.

Main culprits: E. faecalis and K. pneumoniae, both pretty resistant but still susceptible to some antibiotics - all but gentamicin have been tried, including rare or last resort antibiotics and combinations, such as linezolid or thiamphenicol, etc.

https://chronicprostatitis.blogspot.com/p/feedback.html

I'm a chronic prostatitis patient who has tried Georgian & Russian phages before. While they did help, there was no lasting effect. I studied microbiology and so have faith in phages. I'd be looking for a place that could treat me, including by intra-prostatic injections/other delivery methods.

Main culprits: E. faecalis and K. pneumoniae, both pretty resistant but still susceptible to some antibiotics - all but gentamicin have been tried, including rare or last resort antibiotics and combinations, such as linezolid or thiamphenicol, etc.

https://chronicprostatitis.blogspot.com/p/feedback.html

After an announcement last month that Canada would close its phage therapy research program at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Michael Parcey and colleagues have announced a ‘stunning reversal’: a set of unexpected, last-minute contract extensions have come through, meaning the team will continue their phage therapy work. Hooray!

I'm a chronic prostatitis patient who has tried Georgian & Russian phages before. While they did help, there was no lasting effect. I studied microbiology and so have faith in phages. I'd be looking for a place that could treat me, including by intra-prostatic injections/other delivery methods.

Main culprits: E. faecalis and K. pneumoniae, both pretty resistant but still susceptible to some antibiotics - all but gentamicin have been tried, including rare or last resort antibiotics and combinations, such as linezolid or thiamphenicol, etc.

https://chronicprostatitis.blogspot.com/p/feedback.html

Evergreen 2025 is happening, and for the first time in its 50-year history, we're taking it on the road!

Register now for the 26th Biennial Evergreen International Phage Meeting, which will be held August 3-8, 2025, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville!

Hosted by the Phagebiotics Research Foundation, the Denes Lab, and UTK colleagues, this event aims to bring the magic of Evergreen to a new location.

Follow @Evergreen_Phage on X for updates, or stay tuned here — Jan and Jess are excited to help out again this year!

Phage cocktail or personalized therapy — an age-old binary, or a spectrum after all? Minyoung Kevin Kim (Stanford University) and colleagues from Mayo Clinic, QAMH, & KU Leuven published a review on how phage therapy is currently being implemented. They explore the rise of 'phage therapy centers' and the spectrum of treatment approaches being taken, extracting what's common to most & highlighting decision points at each step. Paper | Jessica's X thread about the paper

M. Fernanda Vieira (University of Minho) and colleagues published a new paper on machine learning for phage depolymerase identification, showing PhageDPO achieves 96% accuracy in predicting depolymerases with potential biotechnological applications.

Rebecca Tarnopol (University of California, Berkeley) and colleagues published a new paper on experimental horizontal gene transfer in Drosophila, showing that phage-derived genes confer innate immunity against parasitoid wasps when expressed in fruit fly immune tissues.

Antoine Culot (Rime Bioinformatics) and colleagues published a new paper on high-performance phage genome annotation, showing their automated rTOOLS pipeline provides functional annotations comparable to manual methods, enabling safer and faster phage therapy development.

Andrea Kwa (Singapore General Hospital) and colleagues have announced Singapore’s second phage therapy case.

Newbie with questions on phages: I am an absolute newbie to phages, but, I figured here would be a good place to ask. Anyone know of any phages capable of targeting Candidatus Liberibacter Asiaticus? Anyone do any research with phages on this?

Email: Cole@floridacitrusthreat.org or I respond quicker to: Arrantcole@gmail.com

Thank you so very much! Cole

The First Symposium of the Danish Viruses of Microbes Network will be hosted June 11-13, 2025 in Copenhagen. The meeting will showcase recent phage research and foster collaboration among Nordic scientists.

The International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP) is hosting a conference, taking place on June 26-28, 2023 in Denver, Colorado, USA. The event aims to address scientific developments and challenges in probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics, and fermented foods through diverse engagement formats.

The European Bone and Joint Infection Society (EBJIS) is hosting a conference called EBJIS 2025: Advancing Bone & Joint Infection Management, taking place Sept 11-13, 2025 in Bologna, Italy.

The European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (EUCAST) will host a Phage Susceptibility Testing Symposium March 12 2025.

Garyk Brixi (Arc Institute and Stanford University) and colleagues have expanded on Evo 1, which was trained on prokaryotic and phage genomes, to create Evo 2, now the largest AI model in biology. It was trained on 9.3 trillion nucleotides from 128,000 genomes across all domains of life (spanning bacteria, archaea, phages, humans, plants, and other single-celled and multi-cellular species). It identifies genetic patterns, predicts mutation effects, and designs genome-scale sequences. Evo 2 is fully open-source — play with it here!

Benjamin Adler (University of California, Berkeley) and colleagues published CRISPRi-ART for phage functional genomics, a new broad-spectrum phage functional genomics platform. It leverages RNA-targeting dCas13d to selectively interfere with protein translation, allowing measurement of phage gene fitness at a transcriptome-wide scale. It works for all kinds of phages, and has already identified more than 90 previously unknown genes important for phage fitness!

Melissa Cammuso (The Ottawa Hospital) and colleagues have published a preprint in medRxiv on the first use of phage therapy in Canada for life-threatening, MDR Staphylococcus epidermidis periprosthetic joint infection. This ‘n of 1 trial’ describes how the phage was administered intra-articularly and intravenously, leading to sustained clinical improvement.

Los Angeles Biotech startup Parallel Health has announced an expanded protocol for personalized skin treatments using microbiome science and phage therapy. Their approach combines microbiome testing, custom phage serums, telehealth, and prescriptions to address various skin conditions.

Maria Touceda-Suarez (University of Arizona) and colleagues compiled a report on last year’s successful International Soil Virus Conference 2024, showing key developments in soil viral ecology and recommendations for future research in this rapidly advancing field. Also, participation at this meeting doubled since 2022, with 38% early-career researchers attending from 10 countries!

Wrapping individual phage-infected bacteria in a polymeric nanoscale coating preserves the vitality of the phages released on lysis, which otherwise have severely degraded tail proteins. In mice with bacterially induced enteritis and associated arthritis, phages released from orally administered coated bacteria had higher bioavailability and led to substantially better outcomes than uncoated phages.

From Lars Hestbjerg Hansen via LinkedIn: Hi all. I'm looking for E. coli isolates. Hundreds of them! Even thousands! Preferably, non-clinical isolates. Please contact me if you have a large DIVERSE collection or if you know someone who has. PS. I have the ECOR collection already :)

Ruby Lin and colleagues have created an innovative virtual reality education platform for phage therapy patients. The VR experience guides patients through the entire phage therapy journey, from lab testing to bedside treatment, aiming to reduce anxiety and increase understanding. You can view the 2D version here!

José R Penadés (Imperial College London) and colleagues have shown that a new AI tool, ‘AI co-scientist’ (built by Google), was able to accurately predict their (unpublished) experimental findings about how phage-inducible chromosomal islands spread across bacterial species. Check out this blog post for more on the AI co-scientist!

Proteon Pharmaceuticals has announced the registration of its Salmonella phage-based chicken feed product, BAFASAL PRO, in Brazil! This is Proteon’s third product approval in Brazil, and second in the last year!

The Novo Nordisk Foundation, Wellcome, and Gates Foundation have released a call for proposals on innovative approaches to discover broad-spectrum antibiotics against Gram-negative pathogens, focusing on Klebsiella spp. Apply by March 25, 2025. For info, watch the webinar Feb 27, 6-7am Pacific Time.

Mikael Skurnik (University of Helsinki) and colleagues published a new in-depth review on phage therapy methods, showing comprehensive protocols for isolating, characterizing, and applying phages in therapeutic settings against bacterial infections.

Cheng Lu (South China University of Technology) and colleagues published a new paper on synthesizing headful packaging phages, showing functional phages can be synthesized using yeast transformation-associated recombination with only a unit-length genome plus a 60 bp terminal redundant sequence.

Eugen Pfeifer (Université Paris-Saclay) and colleagues published a new paper on the impact of cephalosporin antibiotics on gut phages, showing cephalosporins induce phage bursts, mostly of virulent phages, which may help restore microbial diversity after antibiotic perturbation.

Brittany Supina (University of Alberta) and colleagues published a new paper on flagella-dependent jumbo phage controlling rice seedling rot, showing a phage that reduces Burkholderia glumae virulence in rice seedlings and depends on bacterial flagella for infection.

Alexa Fitzpatrick (University of Toronto) and colleagues published a new paper on phage reprogramming of bacterial metabolism, showing two phage proteins increase amino acid and putrescine levels in Pseudomonas aeruginosa to promote efficient phage replication by altering host gene expression.

Sada Raza (Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences) and colleagues published a new paper on indigo carmine as an antiphage agent, showing it selectively inactivates DNA phages by binding to their genome and causing capsid deformation, while protecting bacterial cultures.

Unfortunately, funding for the Canadian National Microbiology Lab's Phage Science, Therapeutics, and Research (PhageSTAR) program is ending.

A questionnaire study of 1,098 people in Poland, from the Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy and colleagues, found antibiotic-resistance awareness above 90% but awareness of phage therapy between 8.9% and 39.7% depending on group. Readiness to use phage treatment was 84.4%, even if it must be paid for, while just over one third of physicians (37.5%) were ready to deepen their knowledge.

Sandra Morales and Paul Hyman have published a new perspective called "Quis Custodiet? Are Regulations Slowing Phage Therapy?".  In it, they discuss current regulations, recent efficacy trials and support resources in the context of regulatory approval of phage therapy for widespread use.

Josephine Davey-Young (University of Toronto) and colleagues published a new article entitled 'Phage therapy to treat unresponsive infections: A primer for the clinical microbiology laboratory staff'. They describe the need for specific laboratory practices and standardized susceptibility testing methods for phage therapy implementation.

Kat Pick (University of Alberta) and colleagues published a new paper on a novel phage-inducible chromosomal island in E. coli, showing it aids helper phage replication and represses a pathogenicity island.

Landon Getz (University of Toronto) and colleagues published a new paper on integrons as anti-phage defence libraries, showing integrons in Vibrio parahaemolyticus contain diverse anti-phage defence systems, including 9 previously unrecognized ones, regulated by quorum sensing.

Julia Kelliher (Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico) and colleagues published the outcomes of a recent microbiome data management workshop focused on standardizing reporting guidelines for environmental and host-associated microbiome studies (STREAMS).

Join the consortium if you’d like to help shape these guidelines!

Seeking Themus thermophilus HB27 bacteriophages.

Dear colleagues, I would greatly appreciate sharing T. thermophilus bacteriophages for my research of thermophilic bacteria anti-phage defence or any advice where I can find them.

Please contact me by email prostova@caltech.edu Thank you in advance!

Best regards, Maria Prostova

The University of California San Francisco is hosting a symposium called Annual Bay Area Microbial Pathogenesis Symposium (BAMPS).

The event takes place Saturday, March 22, and aims to bring together researchers interested in microbial pathogenesis and microbes in health and disease. It features short talks, poster sessions, and a keynote by Dr. Nels Elde from the University of Utah.

The International Antiviral Society-USA (IAS-USA) is hosting a conference called Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, taking place October 12-14 2025 in Washington, DC.

This inaugural 2.5-day event aims to bring together 500 US and international researchers to discuss recent advances in phage biology and potential clinical applications.

Featured speakers include Martha Clokie and Philip Kranzusch; conference chairs are Graham Hatfull and Robert (Chip) Schooley, with an extremely exciting roster of key phage scientists and clinicians making up the scientific program committee!

2026 meeting alert! (Yes, 2026 — these get planned early!)

The Beyond Antibiotics: Emerging Strategies for Combating Bacterial Infection Keystone Symposium will take place on May 4–7, 2026 in Breckenridge, Colorado.

The event aims to explore innovative approaches to fight bacterial infections beyond traditional antibiotics. The scientific organizers are Joseph P. Zackular, Kimberly Kline, Daria Van Tyne and Mariana X. Byndloss.

Seeking Themus thermophilus HB27 bacteriophages.

Dear colleagues, I would greatly appreciate sharing T. thermophilus bacteriophages for my research of thermophilic bacteria anti-phage defence or any advice where I can find them.

Please contact me by email prostova@caltech.edu Thank you in advance!

Best regards, Maria Prostova

Stanford undergraduate student Aaryan Harshith published a new blog post on his adventures in the Bollyky lab this past year, which led to his independent quest to discover three novel phages in his first year at the bench!

This is a fantastic read describing some of the trials and tribulations (and joys!) of lab work, that many of us can probably relate to.

(Also Aaryan is awesome; one of Jess’ favourite students — you might consider subscribing to his blog to follow all the other cool things he’s doing, like building phage TEM image databases, and more!)

The University of California San Francisco is hosting a symposium called Annual Bay Area Microbial Pathogenesis Symposium (BAMPS).

The event takes place Saturday, March 22, and aims to bring together researchers interested in microbial pathogenesis and microbes in health and disease. It features short talks, poster sessions, and a keynote by Dr. Nels Elde from the University of Utah.

The International Antiviral Society-USA (IAS-USA) is hosting a conference called Conference on Bacteriophages: Biology, Dynamics, and Therapeutics, taking place October 12-14 2025 in Washington, DC.

This inaugural 2.5-day event aims to bring together 500 US and international researchers to discuss recent advances in phage biology and potential clinical applications.

Featured speakers include Martha Clokie and Philip Kranzusch; conference chairs are Graham Hatfull and Robert (Chip) Schooley, with an extremely exciting roster of key phage scientists and clinicians making up the scientific program committee!

2026 meeting alert! (Yes, 2026 — these get planned early!)

The Beyond Antibiotics: Emerging Strategies for Combating Bacterial Infection Keystone Symposium will take place on May 4–7, 2026 in Breckenridge, Colorado.

The event aims to explore innovative approaches to fight bacterial infections beyond traditional antibiotics. The scientific organizers are Joseph P. Zackular, Kimberly Kline, Daria Van Tyne and Mariana X. Byndloss.

Carolyn Teschke (University of Connecticut), Chuan (River) Xiao (University of Texas at El Paso), and Reza Khayat (City College of New York) are hosting the XXIX Biennial Conference on Phage/Virus Assembly.

The event will take place June 15-20, 2025 at Cape Cod Irish Village in Hyannis, MA, and aims to promote research on virus assembly through open dialogue between researchers from around the world.

The Canadian Society of Microbiologists (CSM) is hosting its 74th Annual Conference.

CSM will take place June 17-20, 2025 at Université de Montréal, the largest francophone university of Canada. The theme for this year’s meeting is “Microbiology for society”; to emphasize how Microbiology has and continue to shape the humanity since millenaries in the different field of life.

The 1st International Symposium on Advances in Phage Therapeutics will take place on June 16-17, 2025, in Braga, Portugal.

Organized by experts behind the Viruses of Microbes 2022 Conference, this symposium will focus on the latest developments in phage therapy, covering topics such as personalized treatments, pharmacokinetics, and applications for chronic infections. Researchers, healthcare professionals, and industry experts are invited to join discussions on the future of phage-based therapeutics.

Stephen Theriault, CEO of Cytophage, gave a TED Talk on Harnessing Phages to Combat Superbugs, exploring how phages can address antibiotic resistance. A scientist, entrepreneur, and former member of Canada’s Ebola vaccine team, he shares his team’s work developing engineered phages to fight bacterial infections, improve food security, and protect the environment.

Sabrina Green via X: If anyone has Endotrap kits and wants to share let us know. This is for patient cases.

How long until governments can subscribe to antimicrobials (instead of paying per use), so it will finally be economically viable to develop them? Italy is now the second country (after the UK) to create a path for this! Damiano de Felice and John Rex break down Italy’s new ‘antibiotic pull incentive’, which will devote €100 million annually for innovative antimicrobials.

NIAID has two grants open that fit could fit your phage research!

1. the 2026 Omnibus Broad Agency Announcement supports work on infectious diseases, including AMR and countermeasures;

2. the CARBIRUs (Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Interdisciplinary Research Units) program funds interdisciplinary teams tackling AMR.

Are you my host? Paul Hyman (Ashland University) published a new paper on methods for linking phages with hosts, showing growth-based, genome sequence-based, and proximity-based approaches each measure different aspects of phage-host interactions and have distinct advantages and limitations.

Owen Tuck (University of California, Berkeley) and colleagues published a new paper on Hachiman antiphage defense complex, showing Hachiman is a nuclease-helicase complex that senses genome integrity and degrades DNA upon detecting damage, inhibiting phage replication.

Susu Jiang, Chau Chen (Shenzhen University Medical School) and colleagues published a new paper on how a phage-encoded kinase phosphorylates multiple host defense systems including DndFGH and CRISPR-Cas to enable infection.

George Wright, Slawomir Michniewski, Eleanor Jameson and Fayyaz ul Amir Afsar Minhas describe DepoRanker, a machine-learning algorithm that ranks proteins by their likelihood of being phage depolymerases targeting Klebsiella capsular polysaccharides. The arXiv preprint (27 January 2025) reports that it outperformed BLAST and was experimentally validated on five newly characterised proteins; it is available as a web server and open-source software.

Indigo carmine, an FDA-approved food additive, selectively inactivated DNA phages (P001, T4, T1, T7, lambda) but not the RNA phage MS2, by binding double-stranded DNA and causing genome ejection from the capsid; under optimal conditions (50 C, 220 rpm) it gave up to a 7-log reduction in phage titer. It also protected E. coli cultures from phage-induced lysis, which the authors propose as an antiphage agent for industrial bioprocesses.

A binary-interaction screen identified coelichelin, a siderophore secreted by Streptomyces sp., as a metabolite that sensitizes its soil competitor Bacillus subtilis to lytic phages (SPO1, SP10, SP50, Goe2) by sequestering iron and preventing activation of the regulator Spo0A. Metabolomics suggests other bacterial natural products may give their producers a similar phage-mediated competitive advantage.

This review surveys phage genomics, phage–host interactions, and medical and biotechnological applications, including mechanisms and therapeutic uses in infections involving virus–bacteria interactions.

PHIStruct is a multilayer perceptron that uses SaProt structure-aware embeddings of receptor-binding proteins to predict hosts among the ESKAPEE genera. The study provides its experimental data and source code on GitHub.

Jimmy Mayer has donated £4 million to rename and expand the University of Leicester's Centre for Phage Research, now called The Becky Mayer Centre for Phage Research.

Daniela Rothschild-Rodriguez (University of Southampton) and colleagues published a new paper on a community-driven Klebsiella phage resource, showing KlebPhaCol comprises 53 phages spanning 5 families, including a novel gut-associated order, targeting diverse Klebsiella strains.

Tongqing Wei (Fudan University) and colleagues published a new paper on predicting phage-bacteria interactions using deep learning, showing DeepPBI-KG can accurately predict interactions based on key genes and outperforms existing methods on multiple datasets.

Yuxing Wu (Guangxi University) and colleagues published a new paper on oral bacteriophage therapy for C. perfringens infections in piglets, showing phage vB_CpeP_15N3 could effectively prevent and treat C. perfringens type C infections in newborn piglets when administered orally.

Marzanna Lusiak-Szelachowska (Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy) and colleagues published a new paper on antiphage antibodies in phage therapy patients, showing antibodies appear late in treatment, particularly with local or combined local/oral administration, without preventing positive outcomes.

Phages for Global Health is featured in "The Good Virus," an upcoming documentary that highlights how PGH workshops have catalyzed phage research across Africa, where scientists are now successfully treating AMR infections and building local capacity for phage research.

Through inspiring stories from Uganda to Kenya, the film shows how international collaboration is transforming the fight against bacterial infections!

Watch the trailer!

Greg German and colleagues have announced PhageRounds, a global network for phage clinicians and scientists with over 350 members. The group hosts confidential grand rounds and fosters collaboration to advance phage therapy against deadly bacterial infections.

Prof. Martin Loessner and Prof. Alexander Harms have announced a thematic issue on Viruses of Microbes in microLife journal. The issue highlights recent discoveries and applications in bacteriophage research, linked to the Viruses of Microbes conference.

Phages for Global Health is featured in "The Good Virus," an upcoming documentary that highlights how PGH workshops have catalyzed phage research across Africa, where scientists are now successfully treating AMR infections and building local capacity for phage research.

Through inspiring stories from Uganda to Kenya, the film shows how international collaboration is transforming the fight against bacterial infections!

Watch the trailer!

Greg German and colleagues have announced PhageRounds, a global network for phage clinicians and scientists with over 350 members. The group hosts confidential grand rounds and fosters collaboration to advance phage therapy against deadly bacterial infections.

Prof. Martin Loessner and Prof. Alexander Harms have announced a thematic issue on Viruses of Microbes in microLife journal. The issue highlights recent discoveries and applications in bacteriophage research, linked to the Viruses of Microbes conference.

Minyoung Kevin Kim (Stanford University) and colleagues published a new paper on designing effective phage-antibiotic cocktails against bacterial infections, showing that combining phages from different "complementarity groups" targeting different bacterial receptors can prevent resistance and effectively treat multidrug-resistant infections.

Saar Van Overfelt (Ghent University, Belgium) and colleagues published a new paper on quantifying bacteriophages using qPCR and double agar overlay (DAO) methods, showing DNase treatment reduces discrepancies between qPCR and DAO quantification by removing free phage DNA in stocks.

Mahshid Khazani Asforooshan (Alzahra University, Iran) and colleagues have isolated and characterized a novel phage targeting Enterococcus faecium from hospital sewage. They designed a hydrogel-based drug delivery carrier, and showed the phage+hydrogel combination promoted wound healing in mice.

Yangjing Xiong (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) and colleagues published a new paper on phage therapy for ETEC-induced diarrhea, showing phage JE01 reduced ETEC colonization and inflammation in mice, with fluorescent imaging revealing rapid intestinal targeting of the phage.

Hany Ahmed (Tanta University, Egypt) and colleagues published a new paper on isolation and characterization of a lytic phage against carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii (CRAB), showing the phage was effective in treating CRAB lung infections in mice and demonstrated safety in lung tissues.

Cheng Peng (City University of Hong Kong) and colleagues published a new paper on a genome foundation model for virus discovery, showing ViraLM outperforms existing tools in identifying novel viral contigs in metagenomic data, especially improving F1-score on short contigs by 22%.

Rachel Seongeun Kim (Seoul National University) and colleagues published a new paper on a large repository of predicted viral protein structures, showing BFVD contains 351,242 structures covering major viral clades and offering unique opportunities to explore viral diversity.

Arturo Carabias (University of Copenhagen) and colleagues published a new paper on phage-encoded NAD restoration pathways, showing how phages counter bacterial immunity through innovative strategies to replenish NAD, providing insights for novel antimicrobial approaches.

The Innovate UK Phage Innovation Network published a new report on developing phage technologies in the UK, showing the UK has strong phage research but limited translation into real-world solutions across sectors. Key actions include establishing GMP manufacturing capability and formulating a national strategy.

Lorenz Leitner and Shawna McCallin (Balgrist University Hospital) published a new paper on guiding phage therapy with genomic surveillance, showing how integrating global and local genomic data can inform phage cocktail design for a middle ground between personalized and product-based approaches.

The International Society for Viruses of Microbes has elected its new board! (Of 1401 members, 32% voted!)   • President-Elect: Rob Edwards, Flinders University, Australia • Vice-President: Hany Anany, Agriculture and AgriFood Canada, Canada • Membership Officer: Cedric Lood, University of Oxford, Great Britain • Treasurer: Tracy Peters, University of Idaho, USA • Information Officer: Luis Melo, University of Minho, Portugal • Website administrator: Hugo Olivera, University of Minho, Portugal • Assistant Secretary: Katja Suster, Valdoltra Orthopaedic Hospital, Slovenia • Industry Outreach: Sandra Morales, Phage Consulting Pty Ltd., Australia   Congratulations to all the elected members! The new Executive Board will start working for ISVM from January 1st, 2025, including Lone Brøndsted as President and Zuzanna Drulis-Kawa as member-at-large.

New North American phage biology and therapy conference alert!

Save the date: Sunday, October 12 to Tuesday, October 14, 2025 at the Washington Hilton Hotel, in Washington, DC. 

Organizers: Graham Hatfull, Chip Schooley, Paul Bollyky and colleagues.

More info coming soon!

New North American phage biology and therapy conference alert!

Save the date: Sunday, October 12 to Tuesday, October 14, 2025 at the Washington Hilton Hotel, in Washington, DC. 

Organizers: Graham Hatfull, Chip Schooley, Paul Bollyky and colleagues.

More info coming soon!

The International Society for Viruses of Microbes has elected its new board! (Of 1401 members, 32% voted!)   • President-Elect: Rob Edwards, Flinders University, Australia • Vice-President: Hany Anany, Agriculture and AgriFood Canada, Canada • Membership Officer: Cedric Lood, University of Oxford, Great Britain • Treasurer: Tracy Peters, University of Idaho, USA • Information Officer: Luis Melo, University of Minho, Portugal • Website administrator: Hugo Olivera, University of Minho, Portugal • Assistant Secretary: Katja Suster, Valdoltra Orthopaedic Hospital, Slovenia • Industry Outreach: Sandra Morales, Phage Consulting Pty Ltd., Australia   Congratulations to all the elected members! The new Executive Board will start working for ISVM from January 1st, 2025, including Lone Brøndsted as President and Zuzanna Drulis-Kawa as member-at-large.

A historic day for Portugal and phage therapy! A phage therapy framework was approved, allowing magistral preparation of personalized phage products. This was done in part by a petition (inspired by the Belgian phage therapy model) signed by Portuguese patients and doctors, as well as Jean-Paul Pirnay and Joana Azeredo’s groups. Congratulations Portugal!

Bhavya Papudeshi (Flinders University) and colleagues published a new preprint on an automated bioinformatics pipeline for phage therapy candidate screening, showing Sphae can rapidly assess phage safety and suitability for therapeutic use in under 10 minutes.

Make the right ones glow! Eleanor Rand (Harvard Medical School) and colleagues developed a new targeted Phage Discovery method based on using multiple fluorescent markers, allowing for co-culture with multiple hosts and visualization of phages that interact with some and not others — no more selecting only for dominant phages in your samples! See also Ellie’s explainer thread.

Phages in sponges! A new study by Leon Steiner (GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel) and colleagues shows single-phage disturbances in the microbiome of marine sponges can disrupt microbial balance, enabling opportunistic bacteria like Vibrio to thrive, shedding light on phage roles in microbiome dynamics and resilience.

Atif Khan (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) and colleagues published a new paper showing chlorine-tolerant phages can inhibit growth and biofilm formation of chlorine-resistant K. pneumoniae isolated from a cooling water system.

Eric Nguyen (Stanford University, Arc Institute) and colleagues published a paper on their new machine learning model, Evo, a new generative AI model trained on millions of phage and bacterial genomes for designing new biological sequences from scratch. They show that Evo can design new functional CRISPRs and transposons, and generate plausible-looking phage genomes based on large phage gene essentiality datasets! Next up — generating phages that actually infect.

Baptiste Gaborieau (Université Paris Cité, France) and colleagues created a new machine learning model able to predict Escherichia phage-host interactions and design effective phage cocktails using only genomic data.

Ryan Cook and Andrew Millard have announced updates to their INPHARED phage genome database, showing a significant increase in Microviridae genomes (from what looks like one new study).

Léa Ibarlosa (CNRS-Université de Bordeaux, France) and colleagues published a new paper on amyloid signaling in antiphage defense, showing that amyloid proteins Bab and Agp form a novel E. coli antiphage system activating cell death upon infection.

Joaquín Martínez Martínez (Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, Maine) and colleagues published a new paper on viral carbon and nitrogen assimilation by microbes, showing protists and bacteria can obtain significant carbon and nitrogen from viruses, representing an important flux in marine biogeochemical cycles.

Phages for Global Health's president, Dr Tobi Nagel, is working in Malaysia for 2 months as part of her Fulbright project on phage therapy regulation systems.

Excitingly, the Malaysia Phage Network (MPN) has just launched! The first meeting of MPN took place this week, organized in partnership with Tobi’s Fulbright hosts in Malaysia, Drs Heera Rajandas and Siva Parimannan from the Asian Institute of Medicine, Science and Technology.

Read more about the first segment of Tobi’s Fulbright project, when she spent 2 months working in Kenya.

For the final segment of that project, she will work in Uganda during March - April 2025, hosted by Dr. Jesca Nakavuma at Makerere University.

Maryn McKenna and Lina Zeldovich held a live Q&A about phage therapy at Emory University. Zeldovich, a Soviet-born scientist-turned-author, discusses her new book "The Living Medicine," which explores the revival of phage therapy as a potential solution to antibiotic resistance. The event is part of Emory's Health Storytelling Author Q&A series.

Chao Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and colleagues published a new paper on phage CRISPR-like regulatory RNAs silencing bacterial immunity, showing how phages use crlRNA mimics to hijack host CRISPR-Cas and abortive infection defenses in P. aeruginosa.

Talia Backman (University of Utah) and colleagues published a new paper on tradeoffs and constraints in tailocin evolution, showing tailocins exhibit extreme target specificity, evolve rapidly, and face tradeoffs between resistance and host colonization.

Anthony King wrote a piece for Nature Outlook on bacteria-killing viruses in the gut microbiome, showing that phages are key players in gut ecology but remain difficult to study due to their abundance and diversity.

Susu Jiang (Shenzhen University Medical School, China) and colleagues published a new paper on phage-encoded kinase evading bacterial defenses, showing the JSS1_004 protein phosphorylates multiple bacterial defense systems to enable phage infection.

Marwan Mahmood Saleh (University of Anbar, Iraq) and colleagues evaluated the lytic efficiency of a three-phage cocktail against multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa isolates in vitro. The cocktail showed broad activity, including against XDR and PDR strains.

Metabolites released from intact, phage-infected Synechococcus strongly attracted the marine bacteria Vibrio alginolyticus and Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis, especially in early infection, while uninfected cyanobacteria did not. 5'-deoxyadenosine and 5'-methylthioadenosine were identified as key attractants, suggesting a pre-lysis route for resource transfer that might affect carbon and nutrient fluxes.

Phages.fr is hosting the 9th French Phage Network Meeting, taking place next week in Sète, France. This annual conference aims to bring together French phage researchers to share recent findings, discuss collaborations, and advance the field of phage biology and applications.

New social network alert! A bunch of phage people are now on Bluesky!

Atif Khan, Jyot Antani, James Gurney, and Richard Allen White III have curated and shared phage-related ‘Starter Packs’ to help newcomers find the phage community on the platform:

• Global Bacteriophage-ologist
• Virome, Phage, and Viruses
• Bacteriophage Science
• Also, check out the hashtag #phagesky

Once you’ve created your account, click to follow everyone on each of these starter packs, and message the creators to request being added to the lists!

Frontiers is hosting a virtual seminar called Visualizing the microbiome: data-driven discoveries on January 18, 2024.

Rob Knight from the UC San Diego will discuss key findings from microbiome research projects, innovative data visualization techniques, and AI applications in microbiome studies.

Baptiste Gaborieau (Université Paris Cité, France) and colleagues published a new paper showing accurate prediction of strain-level phage-bacteria interactions in E. coli using only genomic data.

It's hard to compare results across human gut virome studies. Michael Shamash (McGill University, Canada) and colleagues show that using 'predicted phage host families' can improve cross-study virome analyses and help detect disease-specific virome signatures.

Dong Li (Beijing University of Chemical Technology) and colleagues published a new paper on how phage proteins can sequester signaling molecules from TIR and cGAS-like antiviral defense enzymes.

Also check out this explainer thread by coauthor Iana Fedorova!

Elizabeth Burgener (Children's Hospital of Los Angeles) and colleagues published a new paper on how Pf phage impacts cystic fibrosis patients, with Pseudomonas infections, showing high Pf in sputum is associated with lung function decline and airway inflammation.

Is the Nagoya Protocol doing its job to ensure countries get the benefits from their own genetic resources? Hassan Salem & Martin Kaltenpoth (Max Planck Institute) argue that the protocol's implementation has impeded research due to incompatibility with microbiology, while failing to deliver substantial benefits to provider countries.

Jyot Antani (Yale University) and colleagues developed a microscopy-based technique to measure phage attachment to bacterial cells. This method provides an attractive alternative to the (literally) century-old Phage Adsorption Assay because it...

• is fast
• consumes less media
• provides single-virus readouts
• does not rely on a theoretical model to estimate adsorption rate

Feel free to reach out with any questions: jyot.antani@yale.edu. Requests for advice or collaborations are welcome!

François Rousset (Weizmann Institute of Science) and colleagues discovered a new immune signaling molecule: N7-cADPR, which is produced by phage-stimulated TIR proteins. It activates a bacterial caspase, which then degrades essential proteins to curb infection.

Tong Zhang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and colleagues discovered a bacterial immunity protein that senses two unrelated phage proteins, showing that CapRelSJ46 in E. coli can directly bind two structurally different phage proteins using the same sensory domain. This versatility may help bacterial defenses keep pace with rapidly evolving phages.

Peter Erdmann Dougherty (University of Copenhagen) and colleagues isolated and sequenced 8 novel phages targeting wheat phyllosphere bacteria, characterizing their genomic, phylogenetic, and morphological traits. They identified DNA modifications, including 13 motif-associated single-stranded DNA breaks in Pseudomonas phage Rembedalsseter, and found related phages in various metagenomes.

PHIOGEN is seeking to explore patient experiences with recurrent UTIs and attitudes toward phage therapeutics: the study involves a brief screening questionnaire followed by a survey for qualified participants who experience ongoing UTI symptoms.

Atif Khan (phage scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Chennai, India and longtime Phage Directory volunteer) was interviewed on the "You Make Me Sick!" podcast about his work. They talk phages, biofilms, biofouling, multidrug-resistant organisms, and phage therapy applications.

The Phage Collection Project, led by early career researchers at the University of Southampton, is pioneering a citizen science initiative to tackle AMR.

The project combines public education, clinical biobanking, and policy advocacy to advance development and implementation of phage therapeutics in the UK healthcare system.

They’ve just launched a new blog — check it out!

Using a dataset of interactions between 403 Escherichia strains and 96 phages, researchers predicted strain-level phage-bacteria outcomes from genomic data alone (AUROC 86%) and found that adsorption factors explain most interactions while antiphage systems play a marginal role. They also built a pipeline that recommends tailored phage cocktails, demonstrated on 100 pathogenic E. coli isolates.

Join us for World Phage Week Webinar 2024, hosted by the Ibadan Phage Research Team at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

The event will take place TODAY/TOMORROW — Friday, October 25, to Saturday, October 26, 2024 (West Africa Standard Time).

Register here! And/or tune in to the live stream on YouTube: Day 1 Youtube Livestream | Day 2 Youtube Livestream

Don't miss this exciting annual event!

Darren Smith (Northumbria University) and colleagues invite phage researchers to the Viruses of Microbes - UK conference, featuring keynote speakers, over 100 postgraduate presentations, and a pre-conference phage genomics workshop.

23rd - 24th January 2025

The two-day event aims to support early-career researchers and foster collaborations within the UK phage community.

Phage Hunters Training and Research Program has announced a fundraising campaign to support phage research training in Africa. The initiative aims to equip young scientists with bioinformatics skills for in-silico phage hunting to combat antimicrobial resistance.

New phage book alert! Lina Zeldovich announced that her new book, "The Living Medicine," is out today, described by reviewers as “unputdownable” and compared to "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," making it a must-read for those interested in the intersection of medicine and storytelling (and phages!).

NIAID has announced a new $6M funding opportunity to establish Centers for Accelerating Phage Therapy to combat ESKAPE pathogens. This is the first major NIH phage therapy-specific center-level grant.

By this time next year, 2-3 phage therapy centers in the US will be funded—big news for the field!

Application deadline: January 28, 2025 Key program officer to reach out to: Kyung Moon (NIAID)

Achaogen's 2019 bankruptcy led to the loss of plazomicin, a promising aminoglycoside. John Rex and Kevin Outterson have analyzed the financial failure of plazomicin and Achaogen, summarizing key findings from a post-mortem study.

Their conclusion: novel antibiotics for small patient populations cannot be successfully commercialized in the current US market.

Mihály Koncz (HUN-REN Biological Research Centre, Szeged, Hungary) and colleagues combined phylogeographic analysis with phage typing to guide precision phage therapy, showing that a few carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii strain types dominate infections regionally, enabling development of effective region-specific phage cocktails.

Yunxue Guo (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and colleagues discovered a reverse transcriptase-mediated mechanism of prophage genome reduction in P. aeruginosa biofilms, showing that Pf4 phage-encoded RT and an ncRNA collaborate to generate superinfective variants with ~27% smaller genomes, promoting phage dissemination in biofilms.

Did you know the CDC and FDA have an Antimicrobial Resistance (AR) Isolate Bank? Researchers can order microbial isolates for free, collected from CDC's surveillance and outbreak activities. These isolates are combined into panels for testing. Since its 2015 launch, the AR Isolate Bank has distributed over 10,000 panels to more than 2,000 institutions.

(Thanks to Cathy Nguyen, CDC researcher and former Phage Directory volunteer, for this tip!)

Xin Hou (Sun Yat-sen University, China) and colleagues published a new paper on using AI to expand the diversity of the global RNA virosphere, showing 161,979 putative RNA virus species and 180 RNA virus supergroups identified in diverse global ecosystems.

Tetrapyrroles such as heme, chlorophyll, and vitamin B12 are essential for various metabolic pathways. Helen Wegner (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany) and colleagues demonstrated the presence of tetrapyrrole genes in phage sequences from aquatic environments, showing that these genes are functional and can synthesize 5-aminolevulinic acid.

Stephano Iglesias (Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia) and colleagues created a high-resolution structural atlas of Pseudomonas phage Pa193 using bioinformatics, proteomics, and cryogenic electron microscopy single particle analysis. They identified, annotated, and built atomic models for 21 polypeptide chains forming the capsid, neck, tail, and baseplate.

David Mayo-Muñoz (University of Otago, New Zealand) and colleagues identified noncoding RNAs as key players in bacteria–phage conflicts, showing their roles in bacterial immunity and anti-defense mechanisms.

Nawal Al Aazi (Gaziantep University, Turkey) and colleagues identified clinical Pseudomonas Pf phages inducible by mitomycin and investigated Pf1 phage, showing the presence of Pf1 phage associated with antibiotic effects.

Researchers at Queen's University Belfast and University College Dublin found that combining cold plasma-activated water with phage vB_PmiS_PM-CJR reduced biofilm-embedded Proteus mirabilis cells by about 4 log, as a possible option for catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Exposing the biofilm to plasma-activated water before the phage worked better than the reverse order.

ISVM members are invited to participate in the upcoming elections for the ISVM Executive Board, with voting taking place from October 7th to 21st, 2024, to shape the future of the organization and its initiatives in viruses of microbes research.

A new 'evolutionary trained' phage cocktail exploits resistance tradeoffs to target P. aeruginosa biofilms with enhanced efficacy without triggering dual-phage resistance.

PlzR inhibits type IV pili assembly in P. aeruginosa and prevents phage infection.

A new perspective piece highlights how phages, phage-derived proteins and organic acids offer potential as biocontrols for fruit crop pathogens (especially P. syringae pathovars actinidiae and syringae, which attack kiwifruit and stone fruits), and where the field is moving to next.

An array of anti-defence systems have been discovered in the ‘leading region’ of plasmids (the first to enter the cell), revealing their substantial role in evading bacterial immunity during conjugation. (Not phage exactly, but lots to learn here!)

Qeen Biotechnologies (Gatineau, Quebec) has announced the opening of its new 4,800 sq ft manufacturing facility designed for phage production, with operations starting as of September 2024.

Querying 34 toothbrush and 92 showerhead metagenomes, researchers identified 22 complete, 232 high-quality and 362 medium-quality viral OTUs, with viral richness correlating with bacterial richness. Low sequence similarity to references and many unannotated genes indicate many novel, uncharacterized phages in these household biofilms.

This Week in Virology (TWiV) recorded a special live podcast episode at the 2024 Viruses of Microbes meeting in Cairns, Australia. Hosts Vincent Racaniello and Jolene Ramsey interviewed phage researchers Krystyna Dabrowska and Rob Lavigne about phage therapy, immunological challenges, personalized approaches, and new developments in phage-derived products.

Key timestamps: 23:50 - Immune responses to phages 28:52 - First 100 cases of phage therapy in Belgium 35:23 - Magistral preparation for phage therapy 41:47 - Endolysins and DNA dark matter 50:51 - Phage-derived tools for non-model organisms

Watch the full podcast on YouTube!

This Week in Virology (TWiV) recorded a special live podcast episode at the 2024 Viruses of Microbes meeting in Cairns, Australia. Hosts Vincent Racaniello and Jolene Ramsey interviewed phage researchers Krystyna Dabrowska and Rob Lavigne about phage therapy, immunological challenges, personalized approaches, and new developments in phage-derived products.

Key timestamps: 23:50 - Immune responses to phages 28:52 - First 100 cases of phage therapy in Belgium 35:23 - Magistral preparation for phage therapy 41:47 - Endolysins and DNA dark matter 50:51 - Phage-derived tools for non-model organisms

Watch the full podcast on YouTube!

A team at Singapore General Hospital has initiated individualized phage therapy for their first patient!

If you work with metagenomes (or metatranscriptomes), would like to explore what viruses/phages are in your datasets, but don't know where to start, the Modular Viromics Pipeline is for you!

Looking to find phage sequences in your metagenomic data? A new tool, Jaeger, finds more true positives, fewer false positives, in a reduced runtime!

William Summers has authored a new review on how the Cold War geopolitical climate in the US contributed to the decline of phage therapy, while it thrived in Eastern Europe.

Landman.Bio is a new company advancing sustainable phage-based solutions for combating bacterial infections in crops, leveraging over two decades of research from KU Leuven.

The second UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance  convened yesterday to address the urgent global health crisis of AMR and its implications for public health, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

A 75-year-old female patient with recurrent Pseudomonas septicaemia and arterial stents was treated using a phage–meropenem combination therapy at Tampere University Hospital, Finland. A 3-phage P. aeruginosa cocktail was given IV together with meropenem for 2 weeks. 10-month follow-up showed no adverse reactions, infection markers normalized, recovery was seen in a PET-CT scan, and no further P. aeruginosa septicaemias occurred.

For OMKO1 and LPS-5, two lytic phages used in Felix Biotech’s CF trial recently, Dea M. Müller and colleagues show that determinants of their host range in P. aeruginosa are bacterial receptors, rather than anti-phage defence mechanisms.

Peiying Ho and colleagues from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology screened the PA14NR transposon mutant library and identified key genes involved in P. aeruginosa phage resistance. They found 78 mutants capable of thriving in the presence of phages, with 23 carrying insertions in membrane composition genes, and 6 exhibiting total phage resistance.

A novel phage, TS33, targeting Hafnia species in a model Brie-like cheese community; many host factors that contribute to infectivity are O-antigen genes.

In a recent interview, Dr. Evelien Adriaenssens (Quadram Institute) discusses her career journey to becoming a Group Leader, focusing on the role of phages in the gut microbiome to promote health and combat disease. She reflects on the diverse responsibilities of managing a research group, including mentoring, formulating new research ideas, and fostering collaborations. She also shares insights on her ongoing phage therapy research, specifically targeting Pseudomonas aeruginosa in patients with chronic lung infections.

David Harper discusses the complexities and limitations of using phages as therapeutics in his recent LinkedIn post, emphasizing the challenges posed by the immune system and the size of phages compared to conventional antibiotics.

🎙️ New Podovirus Podcast Episode Alert!

I had such a great time talking to Jesus Fernandez-Rodriguez, PhD, VP of Technology at Eligo Bioscience, about how they're editing live microbes in the mouse gut with engineered phages!

🧬 Highlights & questions:

• 93% editing efficiency in gut E. coli with a single dose of a phage-derived base editor! (And it lasts for at least 6 weeks...!)
• Where are we at with microbiome therapeutics?
• How do you make phages deliver genes to live microbes?
• Is this tool just as cool as a perturbing device (to ASK questions about what happens when you turn off a bacterial gene in the gut) as it is a therapeutic?

Check out the full episode here: 🎧Spotify 📺 Youtube

📄 Here's the team's new Nature paper

🤔One thing I really wanted to know, but must remain a secret for a bit longer — what should we be targeting first with something like this?

Would love to hear your thoughts!