Issue 320
C&T Round Up for July 2025!
This month, we explored how Canada's first successful prosthetic joint infection phage therapy case is leading up to a full clinical trial; plus Jessica wrote a guide/manifesto(?) about why you should sequence (and re-sequence) your phages.
Community digest1alert5updates2jobs4posts
Phage alert
Urgent need for Cutibacterium granulosum phages for a patient in Australia
We are urgently seeking Cutibacterium granulosum phages (or any Cutibacterium-specific phages) for a patient with a vascular graft infection in Australia. If you can help, please reach out!
Ways to help at this stage:
- By sending your phages (or lysins!) for testing on the patient's strains
- By receiving the patient's strain and testing your phages
- By helping spread the word about this request
- By providing us with names/email addresses of labs you think we should contact
Please email staff@phage.directory if you can help in any way, or if you would like further details/clarification.
Let’s make a difference, Phage Directory
Updates
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.
Jobs
Rob Edwards at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia is hiring three postdocs to engineer synthetic phages, study phage gene regulation, and develop bioinformatics tools for structural predictions from metagenomes.
Rob Edwards at Flinders University in Australia is hiring a PhD student to study how phages generate targeted mutations for host-range evolution.
Community board
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.
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.
Happy July!
This month, Jessica and I have been very much heads down in deep work, both in phage work and AI work! We’ve been adjusting things in our mail provider Mailchimp, and unfortunately a couple of newsletters got messed up for this past month.
A lot has changed since we started Capsid & Tail many years ago, and we’re considering making some more changes to the newsletter — please let us know what you’ve liked and disliked so far!
Meanwhile, for this month, here’s what we published:
You should sequence your phages
by Jessica Sacher
In this article, Jessica emphasizes the importance of sequencing your lab’s phages. If at any point you’re in doubt about what phages you’re working with — when you receive a batch from collaborators; when phages sit around for too long; heck you should be sequencing them ideally every time you propagate your phage. The end goal isn’t necessarily to sequence your phage: the goal is to at all times know what you’re working with.
Inside Canada’s first prosthetic joint phage treatment
by Jessica Sacher
This was a cool podcast interview Jessica did with Dr. Marisa Azad, a physician behind one of Canada’s first bone infection phage therapy cases (and it was a success!). Of note is the discussion of choosing an N-of-1 approach vs. a compassionate use route, and the pros and cons of each approach. Both choices have their own merits and their long-term benefits and consequences — and for Dr. Azad, she chose to lead a multi-center trial platform for phage therapy, across Canada. Please give this one a listen!
Producing phages consistently: then and now
Throwback: The phage that helped treat Dr. Marisa Azad’s patient came from Slovenia, and this is a good time to re-read how Frenk Smrekar and Barbara Hubad of JAFRAL help companies and university labs consistently produce safe phages. Worth a read!
~ 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.