Issue 300
C&T Round Up for February 2025!
Issue #300! This month we announced the return of Evergreen, covered Intralytix's 25-year-long overnight success, and Silvia's journey to build up a new phage lab.
Sponsor
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At the 7th Bacteriophage Therapy Summit, returning to Boston March 11-13, 2025 (next week!), dive into the regulatory and investment landscape for drug developers, clinical updates showing efficacy, utilizing machine learning, and developing personalized and off-the-shelf therapies to fight AMR in infectious diseases.
Register here and use discount code PHAGEDIRECTORY10 for 10% off!
Community digest5updates4jobs5posts
Updates
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!
Jobs
Dr. Nnaemeka Emmanuel Nnadi's lab at Plateau State University, Bokkos is open for MSc and PhD students to pursue projects in microbiology, molecular biology, and biotechnology, focusing on health and environmental challenges.
University of Glasgow is hiring a Research Associate, to study mechanisms and evolutionary dynamics of phage-anti-phage systems, specifically newly discovered anti-phage systems in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
MD PhD Student in Uro-Infectiology with a Focus on Bacteriophage Therapy at Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland
We seek a motivated MD-PhD candidate to join our team in May/June for translational research on urinary tract infections (UTIs). The role focuses on analyzing clinical and microbiological data from trials on novel UTI treatments, particularly phage therapy.
Researcher (Faculty and Technologists) in Molecular Biology of Phage-Bacteria-Animal Symbioses at One Health Microbiome Center, Penn State University in University Park, PA, USA
The Bordenstein lab in the One Health Microbiome Center at The Pennsylvania State University seeks multiple Researchers. The Researcher position (non-tenure track faculty) will focus on the use of Drosophila transgenic expression, genetic editing techniques, fitness assays, reproductive tissue dissections, fluorescent and electron microscopy, microinjections, and team management to understand the genetics and mechanisms of how endosymbionts and their phage genes modify reproduction in animals.
Community board
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.
Hi phage phans,
Look at that, we’re on Issue 300! That’s a really big number!
When we first started Capsid & Tail, we only planned to write maybe 30 issues. Years later, we’re still going strong!
Jessica’s still heads down working on Pf and ΦX174 phages at Stanford, while I’m heads down working on Evergreen and prototyping some other projects — there’s so many fun experiments to share, but still so many bugs to fix.
I’ve also been messing with the Phage Directory website, and we’re ready to flip the switch to the new site soon. Excited to share!
Here’s what we published this past month:
First food, then pharma: How Intralytix played the long game with phages
by Jessica Sacher
Jessica recaps her podcast conversation with Sandro Sulakvelidze about Intralytix’s 25-year-long journey, from startup to one of the few profitable phage companies.
Sandro shares how growing up in phage-friendly Tbilisi led him to found Intralytix after witnessing US patients dying from infections that could have been treated with phages, and explains their strategic pivot to food safety applications before moving into human therapeutics. The conversation covers Intralytix's experience with FDA approvals, their AI-driven manufacturing innovations, and Sandro's vision for the future of phage therapy.
Intralytix: https://intralytix.com/
Evergreen Phage Meeting hits the road for 2025
by Ria Kaelin and Tom Denes
Ria and Tom announce that the Evergreen Phage Meeting now in Knoxville, Tennessee for 2025! After 50+ years in Olympia, Washington, the meeting is expanding its reach while honoring Dr. Betty Kutter's legacy and introducing new scientific tracks including diagnostics, regulation & policy, biomanufacturing, and career development alongside traditional phage biology topics.
Sign up before March 2nd for Early Bird! https://evergreen.phage.directory
Building a phage lab: a journey of resilience, teamwork, and sticky situations
by Silvia Würstle, Maria J.G.T. Vehreschild, Simone Lieberknecht-Jouy, Fedja Farowski
In this article, Dr. Silvia Würstle and her team share their experience transforming an abandoned, water-damaged space into a modern phage laboratory at the University Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany. The team describes their journey from dealing with warped floors and empty rooms to creating a fully-equipped, certified lab space, highlighting challenges like navigating hospital ordering systems without product photos, securing specialized equipment, and learning technical specifications on the fly. Despite the obstacles, they successfully built three lab spaces, an office, a common room, and a storage area with support from hospital staff and the global phage community.
Setting up systems to make phages available for all
Throwback: I really loved this article from last year, where Jessica laid out our entire process for setting up our phage lab’s system. I think this article pairs very well with both Sandro’s and Silvia’s Hero’s Journey stories!
~ Jan & Jessica
Jan Zheng, MHCI
I'm Jan, the other half of Phage Directory, and co-write Capsid & Tail.
Previously, I did data work at Phage Australia / Westmead Institute, where I built the biobank databases, data systems, and bioinformatics workflows for the clinical trial
I have a background in computer science and human-computer interaction, and I'm currently full-time at building the agentic layer for science at Nvidia.