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Jessica Sacher, PhD

Phage Directory; Stanford University; Bollyky Lab

Website@JessicaSacherLinkedInORCIDGoogle ScholarResearchGate

I'm a co-founder of Phage Directory and have a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Alberta (I studied Campylobacter phage biology). For Phage Directory, I help physicians find phages for their patients, and I'm always trying to find new ways to help the phage field grow (especially through connecting people and highlighting awesome stuff I see happening in the field).

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

As of 2024, I joined the Bollyky lab at Stanford University as a Staff Scientist, where I'm focused on phage engineering and delivery (to both microbial and human cells) and hydrogel-embedded phage cocktail development for wounds!

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  1. Q&A: Favorite phage production equipment This week we're trying something new — let's call it Phage Community Q&A! You send us your questions, we send you off-the-cuff answers. This week, Jess shares her favorite phage-making equipment in response to a researcher who's setting up… 323.Jessica Sacher
  2. How to get successful outcomes with phage therapy "When I first treated, we had no idea how much to give, how often to give... we weren't aware of what the concentration of phage should be." IPATH's Dr. Saima Aslam shares how eight years of treating patients has taught her team to achieve… 322.Jessica Sacher
  3. Our Phage Picks for Aug 2025 It’s Phage Picks time! This week, we highlight some new mind-expanding papers — one showing how phage killing might train the immune system like vaccines, one unpacking how temperate phages rewrite bacterial flagella with RNA-guided tools,… 321.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  4. You should sequence your phages When's the last time you sequenced the phages in your lab? Have you ever, or are you relying on what someone said they were? You might be like 12/13 phage labs and have secret mixtures masquerading as pure phages. You should sequence your… 319.Jessica Sacher
  5. Inside Canada's first prosthetic joint phage treatment "It still doesn't happen overnight — the paperwork itself, I aged like 20 years." Dr. Marisa Azad shares the real timeline and logistics behind Canada's first bone infection phage therapy case, plus why her N-of-1 approach creates a… 318.Jessica Sacher
  6. How to read papers This week we're diving into something we're pretty sure every researcher grapples with: how to read papers without your brain melting! Jess posted about this on LinkedIn and it blew up — tons of researchers shared their own… 316.Jessica Sacher
  7. Our Phage Picks for June 2025 It's Phage Picks time! This week Jess picks another 'bread-and-butter' phage lab paper about how to keep your phages stable (genetically and physically) over the decades, and Jan surfaces a killer overview of all the ways phage + AI is… 315.Jessica Sacher
  8. How to navigate regulatory limbo: a Canadian phage therapy CEO's playbook "There's 145 components of the regulatory requirements that I don't fit in. So how do I get past that? And governments right now say, I don't know." 314.Jessica Sacher
  9. Why can't more patients access phage therapy? "This feels just like the early days of the HIV crisis. People are dying, you're not hearing about it. We need a group like ACT UP to bring this to the public. We're not going to get phage therapy until people start demanding we have it." 310.Jessica Sacher
  10. Finally, phase 2 phage therapy data! Inside BiomX's successful trial with CEO Jonathan Solomon "We put a dent in the theory that phage therapy doesn't work. Maybe it does work. Maybe it's worth taking a risk." This week we talk to Jonathan Solomon, CEO of BiomX, about their successful phase 2 clinical trial for diabetic foot… 309.Jessica Sacher
  11. C&T Round Up for April 2025! Another round up! This month, we feature a new Lab Hacks format from Jess, one of our most controversial Capsid posts on AI use in science, and a Phage Picks of some of Jessica's nearest and dearest protocols (she uses these all the time —… 308.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  12. Our Phage Picks for April 2025 It's Phage Picks time! This week's theme is bread and butter — two picks from Jess about methods papers that should be staples of any phage lab: her favourite phage-making paper, and an (aspirational) phage quantification paper she really… 307.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  13. Does every scientist need an AI co-scientist? "It was right in front of us the whole time." Imperial College London professors José Penadés & Tiago Costa challenged Google's new 'AI co-scientist' with a phage PICI question they'd just solved after years of work. Given their unpublished… 306.Jessica Sacher
  14. Tips from the lab: Rapid lab hacks New format alert! Here's 5 rapidfire, off-the-cuff tips from the lab — from how to tweak plaque size to purifying filamentous phages to preventing phage cross-contamination. These first 5 are written by Jessica but we hope to crowdsource… 305.Jessica Sacher
  15. C&T Round Up for March 2025! Roundup time! This month, we heard from Aaryan's experience as an undergrad researcher at Paul Bollyky's lab. We picked papers across topics like T4-AAV viral vectors, cell-free synthesis of phages, and taxMyPhage, a new tool for… 304.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  16. Our Phage Picks for March 2025 What else can phages do, besides kill bacteria? Are bacteria even needed to make them anymore? In this month's Phage Picks issue, we cover phage+AAV hybrids to deliver genes to eukaryotic cells, cell-free phage synthesis, and a bonus… 302.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  17. If antibiotics companies fail, why won't phage companies? "As soon as investors hear 'infectious disease,' their eyes get big. When they hear 'antibacterial,' alarm bells start ringing.” And yet, Amanda Burkardt and Mayukh Das are building Phiogen Pharmaceuticals anyway. Why? 301.Jessica Sacher
  18. First food, then pharma: How Intralytix played the long game with phages "Phages? We don't use those here." This week, learn how these words propelled Sandro Sulakvelidze, fresh from phage-friendly Tbilisi, into a 25+ year journey to build a phage company with FDA-approved products. 297.Jessica Sacher
  19. The Year of the Phage Machine Happy 2025 everyone! It's still January so we can still say happy new year! We are finally back after a nice long extended Christmas break + insanity January. Tons of phage news has accumulated — here you go! 296.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  20. Year in Review 2024 This year we moved from Sydney to San Francisco — what a year. Here's some reflections, things that went well, things that didn't, and some things we learned. Happy holidays to everyone! 295.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  21. Our Phage Picks for December 2024! Phage + machine learning = amazing strides, yet again! From creating synthetic genomes to building smarter experiments, this month’s Phage Picks issue explores some key papers Jess & Jan keep coming back to! 294.Jessica Sacher
  22. A Mayo Clinic Physician's Journey with Phage Therapy What's it like treating patients with phages at a major US medical center? In a new Podovirus Podcast episode, Mayo Clinic's Dr. Gina Suh shares insights from 5 years of phage therapy — the successes, the challenges, and what it takes to… 289.Jessica Sacher
  23. How Eligo Bioscience edits gut bacteria with phages How can we harness phage-based technologies to edit bacterial genes in the microbiome? Jesus Fernandez of Eligo Biosciences shares how they're modifying phages to base-edit mouse gut bacteria, and how that opens up new possibilities for… 284.Jessica Sacher
  24. C&T Round Up for August 2024! This month, we recap what we learned about AI spreadsheet tools, how phage funding has changed over the years, and the rise of phage research in Latin America! 279.Jessica Sacher
  25. Getting phage research funded: Joe Campbell reflects on a career at NIAID How do we get our phage grants funded? We start by getting to know our program officers! Joe Campbell has played a key role in shaping phage research funding for the last decade during his time at NIAID, and this week shares how he sees the… 277.Jessica Sacher
  26. N of 1 trials vs. compassionate use for phage therapy What are 'n of 1' clinical trials, how do they compare to compassionate use, and how might they be used for phages? This week Jessica shares musings about this topic, which has been swirling in her brain for a while now... 274.Jessica Sacher
  27. Our Phage Picks for July 2024! It's Phage Picks time! This week we've got the fifth rendition of our new format, where we share the papers we keep bookmarked, and keep coming back to. 273.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  28. Our Phage Picks for May 2024! Here's the third rendition of our new format: Phage Picks — where we share the papers we keep bookmarked... and keep coming back to. 264.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  29. Why all phage researchers need to be in Australia this July This week we've got an interview with Jeremy Barr on what to expect this year at the Viruses of Microbes conference in Cairns, Australia! From Great Barrier Reef, to crocodile jet ski stories, to special ways they're making the conference… 263.Jessica Sacher, Jeremy Barr
  30. Setting up systems to make phages available for all Six years ago, just as I was finishing up my microbiology PhD, I stumbled across an opportunity to help a patient. One patient turned into many, and what I used to think was 50 years away — using phages to treat infections — has become my… 261.Jessica Sacher
  31. What do we know about phages and neutrophils? There's been a few studies lately on phages and neutrophils. Do they help each other? Do they get in each other's way? Who can keep track? This week we take a look at three phage-neutrophil papers and what they found. 260.Jessica Sacher
  32. Our Phage Picks for April 2024! Here's the second rendition of our new format: Phage Picks — where we share the papers we keep bookmarked... and keep coming back to. 259.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  33. How a prophage controls fly reproduction This week we're highlighting a brand new paper out of the Bordenstein lab, out yesterday in Science, that unravels the mechanism by which prophage-encoded proteins control whether Drosophila flies reproduce or not. 255.Jessica Sacher
  34. Our Phage Picks for March 2024! We're starting off the year by trying a new format: Phage Picks — where we share the papers we keep bookmarked... and keep coming back to. 254.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  35. We're back! Hello 2024! We’re excited to embark on another new chapter this year, this time in the San Francisco Bay Area! Here’s some reflections on the transition now that we’re stateside, what we’re thinking about these days, and a sneak peek into what’s in… 253.Jessica Sacher
  36. Year in Review 2023 This week we wrap up 2023 and reflect on our biggest surprises and proudest moments! Things are also changing in 2024... 252.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  37. Lessons from viral vectors, CAR-T, & RNA Phage production has its quirks, but it’s not the only field trying to reliably manufacture a new biological entity. This week Jessica shares learnings from Australia’s annual bioprocessing conference about challenges other fields are… 249.Jessica Sacher
  38. ChatGPT tips for lab work This week, we get to explore and share some ideas about how to (responsibly) use ChatGPT for lab work! 243.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  39. Making our phage therapy process more efficient This week Jessica Sacher shares ways the Phage Australia lab team has been improving efficiency of its phage therapy system, such as dividing up work, managing expectations, overcommunicating with clinical teams, and setting up solid lab… 239.Jessica Sacher
  40. How our phage therapy system works at Phage Australia At Phage Australia, we're scaling up personalized phage therapy. Jessica Sacher shares an overview of the process, to assist other centers in navigating the challenges of running a successful phage therapy (or other bio-based) service. 231.Jessica Sacher
  41. Getting our AKTA-gether: Using the AKTA Flux to purify phages for patients This week I’m excited to share how I’ve been using the AKTA Flux system to purify phages for patients. What used to be overwhelming now feels pretty dreamy. Worth considering for any phage lab making patient-ready preps! 228.Jessica Sacher
  42. Evergreen turns 50: celebrating Dr. Betty Kutter’s legacy This week, we’re proud to open up registration for the Evergreen Phage Meeting. This year’s Evergreen phage meeting will be in-person (!), absolutely packed with science and activities (!!), and will be a celebration of both Betty’s… 223.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  43. Discovering coding (& building an AI tool) as a biologist, thanks to ChatGPT This week, Jessica Sacher shows you how, as a non-coder, she got ChatGPT to help her make a chatbot that knows everything we've published across 220 Capsid & Tail blog posts (almost every week for the last 4.5 years!), how you can play with… 220.Jessica Sacher
  44. qPCR for phage therapy, part II This week Jessica Sacher continues her 'qPCR for phage therapy' series. She takes us through how we know if our qPCR worked, what to look for, and how to interpret how much phage/bacteria were in our samples based on the results. 218.Jessica Sacher
  45. qPCR as a window into phage therapy This week Jessica Sacher talks about how to use qPCR to count phage and bacteria in patients during phage therapy. This is part I of a multipart series. 216.Jessica Sacher
  46. Lessons in scaling bio, team science & priorities This week, Jessica Sacher shares learnings from setting up a pipeline for phage production/purification/QC at Phage Australia, and using it to provide phage therapy for our first 3 patients in 2022! Biggest learning: the hardest part about… 210.Jessica Sacher
  47. Investing in the future of phage therapy This week, we're republishing an article Dr. Jon Iredell and Jessica Sacher wrote for GARDP Revive, the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership. 207.Jon Iredell, Jessica Sacher
  48. 2023: A look ahead Well hello there, 2023! We’ve made great strides in the past year, gotten our hands wet in the lab (Jessica at least 😉), built data systems, and even delivered phages for patients. This year we aim to do a whole lot more of that! This… 206.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  49. Reflecting back on 2022 We’re at the end of the year again, and what a whirlwind of a 2022 it’s been! Here's our annual end-of-year reflection on what we're most proud of, what we've accomplished, & those who've helped us along the way! 205.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  50. C&T Round Up for September 2022! This week, we highlight the feature articles we published in September! Learn about main themes from Phage Futures Europe 2022, MetaPhage: a new pipeline for turning raw reads into phage insights, and how to set up a basic phage QC system… 195.Jessica Sacher
  51. How do we prove our phages are safe? Patients need safe phages, but most regulators don't yet have official positions on what makes a phage batch safe. This week, Jessica Sacher (Iredell lab, Phage Australia) shares her recent foray into learning about phage quality control… 194.Jessica Sacher
  52. C&T Round Up for August 2022! This week, we highlight the feature articles we published in August! Learn about phage+AI and how you can get involved, what happened at Phage Futures this year, how phage-making is going at Phage Australia, and meet Phage Directory's… 191.Jessica Sacher
  53. Therapeutic phage-making: how my first batch measured up This week Jessica Sacher shares an update on her work toward setting up a new phage-making system in the Iredell lab (part of Phage Australia). 188.Jessica Sacher
  54. We have the best volunteers! Our lovely phage community would not exist without the hard work of some incredible phage enthusiasts! This week, we're recognizing a few of our Phage Directory volunteers for some great stuff they've done lately. 187.Jessica Sacher
  55. C&T Round Up for July 2022! This week, we highlight the feature articles we published in July! Learn about Intralytix's past and present, navigating complexity when you start making phages for therapy, and the new phage-bacteria interaction atlas the Gates Foundation… 186.Jessica Sacher
  56. How to start making phages for therapy This week Jessica Sacher takes us through her process for setting up a new phage-making system in the lab, including making sense of a dizzying array of options, managing overwhelm, and resisting 'optimization creep'. 184.Jessica Sacher
  57. C&T Round Up for June 2022! This week, we highlight the feature articles we published in June! Learn about what happened when the Phage Australia team shipped a phage around the country, Jean-Paul Pirnay's views on phage therapy, and how producing phages has changed… 182.Jessica Sacher
  58. C&T Round Up for May 2022! This week, we highlight the feature articles we published in May! Learn about the latest Mycobacterium phage treatment, how we might make our spot tests less subjective, how to get involved in DeSci, and what a phage biologist thought of… 178.Jessica Sacher
  59. Diving into a DAO as a scientist: what does help look like? You may have heard people (especially on Twitter) talking about DeSci, or decentralized science. Today Jessica Sacher shares her experience diving into LabDAO, a new DeSci initiative enabling science through a lab space/experiment sharing… 177.Jessica Sacher
  60. 500 days of phage beats M. abscessus in the CF lung This week, we highlight a new case report published last week in Cell. It documents the successful phage therapy of a Mycobacterium abscessus infection, which led a 26-year old in Colorado with cystic fibrosis to receive a lung transplant… 176.Jessica Sacher
  61. C&T Round Up for April 2022! This week, we highlight the features we published in April! Catch up on what happened at the last Phage Futures Europe, and learn how to organize your phage biobank data! 173.Jessica Sacher
  62. C&T Round Up for March 2022! This week, we highlight the features we published in March! Learn about how to name your phage, how to track your phages, and how to get pheedback from phage peers! 170.Jessica Sacher
  63. C&T Round Up for February! This week, we highlight the features we published in Feb — learn about digital phagograms, phageSuisse and the recently held Bacteriophage Therapy Summit! 165.Jessica Sacher
  64. Let's focus the power of Web3 on science & biotech's problems Phage Directory started because Jan (a 'tech person') saw how his skills could help fix inefficiencies in Jessica's field: phage biology. Now, more people like Jan are getting excited to focus on solving problems in science/biology/biotech… 160.Jessica Sacher
  65. 2022: Building the Operating System for Phage Therapy Good morning, 2022! We’re extremely proud of our work empowering the community, running events like Evergreen and building Instill. This year, we'll be focused on building the “operating system” for phage therapy. From lab workflows to web… 158.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  66. Reflecting back on 2021 It's our last issue of the year! We reflect on what we're especially proud of from this year, and highlight some stats on where we're at as a community! Also: a giant thanks to each of our amazing volunteers! 157.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  67. C&T Round Up for November 2021 This week, we highlight the feature articles we published in November! Learn about optimizing the route for phage delivery, single use bioreactor technologies vs. traditional solutions, and phage therapy to combat a shell infection in a sea… 155.Jessica Sacher
  68. State of Phage #3: Exploring phage collections We're compiling the results of our State of Phage 2020 Survey, and we're excited to show you a third snapshot of the findings! Today we're focusing on phage collections; which phages are labs collecting, how many do they have of each, and… 147.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  69. Evergreen 2021: Many thanks to all 504 phage phans! Last week, in collaboration with Dr. Betty Kutter and her unstoppable team, we helped run the iconic Evergreen International Phage Meeting — but with a twist — this time it was a hybrid virtual/in-person event! We are overjoyed with how it… 139.Jessica Sacher, Elizabeth (Betty) Kutter, Jan Zheng
  70. Raise your impact with Instill Science Are your manuscripts meeting their potential? We're launching a new community initiative called Instill Science to help you raise your impact (and get credit for helping your fellow phage community members do the same). 134.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  71. You're invited to the Evergreen International Phage Meeting! In case you haven't heard, the Evergreen Phage Meeting is happening both in person and online this year in Olympia, Washington from Aug 1-6. This week, we're highlighting what to expect from this meeting (via a letter from Betty Kutter) and… 133.Jessica Sacher
  72. C&T Round Up for May 2021 This week, we're highlighting the three feature articles we published in May: a 'behind-the-paper' guest post by Steven Sutcliffe and Michael Shamash, a full recap of all six iVoM webinars by Ivone Martins and Luis Melo, and an interview… 128.Jessica Sacher
  73. C&T Round Up for April 2021 This week, we're highlighting the four feature articles we published in April: virtual event recaps by volunteers Rohit Kongari and Stephanie Lynch, a guide on responding to phage therapy requests, and an opinion piece by Mert Selimoglu on… 124.Jessica Sacher
  74. How to respond when someone asks you for phage therapy Are you getting phage therapy requests from the public, and wondering how to respond? We've put together a guide + resources you can use (short version: send them our way)! Bonus: we've included resources for physicians too, including how… 121.Jessica Sacher
  75. Phage Futures Congress 2021: Meeting Recap We attended Kisaco Research's Phage Futures Congress 2021 at the end of February, and now present our recap of the event. We hope to provide a window into what you missed, and/or a refresher if you were there! 117.Jessica Sacher, Sheetal Patpatia, Jan Zheng
  76. Quick Dive: Diabetic foot ulcers and phage therapy Today we're doing a quick dive into diabetic foot ulcers and phages. What's the problem, what are some ways phages have been used to date, and what's the current status of clinical trials? 116.Jessica Sacher
  77. C&T Round Up for February 2021 This week, we're highlighting the four feature articles we published in February: an interview with Richard Alm of CARB-X, part two of our State of Phage survey results, and a recap of the three phage events we hosted last week, written by… 115.Jessica Sacher
  78. State of Phage #2: A wide diversity of strains We're compiling the results of our State of Phage 2020 Survey, and we're excited to show you a second snapshot of the findings! Today we're focusing on strain collections; which bacterial species are phage labs collecting, how many do they… 113.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  79. Funding phage development — a Q&A with CARB-X's Richard Alm This week, we bring you an interview with Dr. Richard Alm, Alliance Director at CARB-X, a major current funder of new antimicrobials, including phage! Richard shares how he sees phages fitting into the clinical landscape, and shares his… 112.Jessica Sacher, Richard Alm
  80. State of Phage #1: A wide diversity of backgrounds & phage experience It's been almost three months since we launched our State of Phage 2020 Survey! We're excited to show you a snapshot of the data coming in. Today we're focusing on who responded to the survey: where are they from, what's their career stage,… 110.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  81. Enough phage for a farm: How Proteon Pharmaceuticals manufactures phages for livestock farming For this week's feature article, we interviewed Dr. Arkadiusz Wojtasik, a Production Director at Proteon Pharmaceuticals, about how his team uses the Cellexus CellMaker to produce phage for livestock farming. 109.Jessica Sacher, Arkadiusz Wojtasik
  82. 2021: Empowering the phage community Hello 2021!! This year, we're focusing on empowering the phage community with the knowledge and tools it needs to overcome phage research challenges & help others do the same. 107.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  83. Looking back on the year 2020 For our last issue of 2020, we're reflecting back on Phage Directory's 2020 progress, and the incredible collaborators who have made it possible. We're really proud of the ways we've been able to connect and work with the phage community… 106.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  84. Bringing phage susceptibility testing to India Pranav and Apurva Johri, founders of Vitalis Phage Therapy, recently set up a new framework that allows patients in India to get phage susceptibility testing done locally. We sat down with Pranav and Apurva to learn more about what this… 105.Pranav Johri, Apurva Virmani Johri, Jessica Sacher, Rohit Kongari
  85. C&T Round Up for November 2020 This week, we're highlighting the four feature articles we published in November: two interviews, a guest blog post, and a recap of the month's PHAVES event! 104.Jessica Sacher
  86. C&T Round Up for October 2020 This week, we're highlighting the three feature articles we published in October: an interview, a guest blog post, and a recap of the two PHAVES events we hosted this month. Enjoy! 99.Jessica Sacher
  87. From phage scale-up to phage piracy: October's PHAVES talks This month, we hosted two episodes of PHAVES! Here are the recordings, along with brief summaries. Thanks very much to our special guests, Gordon Smith (Fixed Phage), Chloe Jerrold-Jones (Cellexus), and Dr. Rodrigo Ibarra-Chavez (University… 98.Jessica Sacher
  88. C&T Round Up for September 2020 This week, we're highlighting the four feature articles we published in September: two guest blog posts, an interview, and a recap of the two PHAVES events we hosted this month. Enjoy! 95.Jessica Sacher
  89. From gut phages to fish phages: a recap of September's PHAVES talks This month, we hosted two episodes of PHAVES! Here's your recap of both, along with links to the recordings. Thanks very much to our special guests, Dr. Sabrina Green and Dr. Panos Kalatzis. 94.Jessica Sacher
  90. Using the CellMaker to manufacture phage: Q&A with TechnoPhage's Manuel Garrido This week, we interviewed Dr. Manuel Garrido, a Production Specialist at TechnoPhage, about how they've scaled their phage manufacturing with the help of the Cellexus CellMaker. 92.Jessica Sacher, Manuel Garrido
  91. C&T Round Up for August 2020 This week, we're highlighting the three feature articles we published in August: two interviews and a recap of the two PHAVES events we hosted this month. Enjoy! 90.Jessica Sacher
  92. From phage therapy to viromics and phage careers: a recap of August's PHAVES This month, we hosted two episodes of PHAVES! Here's your recap of both, along with links to the recordings. Thanks very much to our special guests, Pranav Johri, Apurva Virmani Johri, and Dr. Evelien Adriaenssens. 89.Jessica Sacher
  93. How the Félix d'Hérelle Center manages its phages Since 2003, Denise Tremblay has managed the phage collection at the Félix d'Hérelle Reference Center for Bacterial Viruses at the Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada. We interviewed Denise about how the center collects, stores and… 87.Jessica Sacher, Denise Tremblay
  94. C&T Round Up for July 2020 This week, we're rounding up an extra helping of July 2020's phage news and research. 86.Jessica Sacher
  95. From phage-disinfectant combos to phage AI: a recap of July's PHAVES This month, we hosted two episodes of PHAVES! Here's your recap of both, along with links to the recordings. Thanks very much to our special guests, Dr. Elyse Stachler and Piotr Tynecki! 85.Jessica Sacher
  96. Scaling up phage production: Q&A with Cellexus CEO This week, we interviewed Gavin Hands, CEO of Cellexus, about the company's history of helping phage researchers and biotech companies scale up their phage production. 84.Jessica Sacher
  97. C&T Round Up for June 2020 This week, we're rounding up an extra helping of June 2020's phage news and research. 81.Rohit Kongari, Jessica Sacher
  98. Kicking off PHAVES, our virtual event series! We kicked off PHAVES this Tuesday! We discussed Phage Directory's origin story and future directions, answered questions from the community, and hosted a series of small-group breakout sessions. Here's how it all went! 80.Jessica Sacher
  99. C&T Round Up for May 2020 Continuing the new, once-monthly Capsid & Tail format we started in April, this week we're rounding up an extra helping of May 2020's phage news. 77.Jessica Sacher, Rohit Kongari
  100. Could phages cure asthma? This week, we're spotlighting CURE, a multidisciplinary project laying the foundation for treating and curing asthma with phages. 76.Jessica Sacher
  101. Creating a searchable directory of phages We're excited to share a sneak-peek into our progress toward creating a global phage catalogue and search tool! 74.Jan Zheng, Jessica Sacher
  102. C&T Round Up for April 2020 It's a challenge to pick from so many exciting phage-related developments each week, and our backlog is overflowing! So in place of a Feature Article, we're dedicating this week's issue to sharing an extra helping of phage news and articles… 73.Jessica Sacher, Rohit Kongari
  103. Phage Futures Congress 2020: Meeting Recap The last time we were at a conference, it was Phage Futures Congress 2020 (Feb 5-6, 2020). Since we're all working from home, it's a perfect time to reflect back on the phage development community's recent progress. 70.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  104. Phages to treat secondary bacterial infections in COVID-19 patients? Can phages help COVID patients? We've been hearing chatter about this subject from the phage community over the last few days, so we've decided to start the conversation here and keep it going. What, if anything, can the phage community do… 69.Jessica Sacher, Kathryn Kauffman
  105. Apply for Phage Directory-VoM Writing Awards! Attention student and postdoctoral phage biologists planning to attend Viruses of Microbes 2020 in Portugal this year! Phage Directory will be sponsoring two cash awards in collaboration with the Viruses of Microbes organizing committee,… 68.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  106. How to find phages for your research Need phages for your research? This week, we bring you a guide on how to use Phage Directory to find the phages you need. 65.Jessica Sacher
  107. Phage manufacturing challenges and how academic-commercial collaboration can help This week, we bring you an interview with Danish Malik, Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University. He tells us about current challenges with phage manufacturing, including what phage companies need to think about, and how… 61.Jessica Sacher, Danish Malik
  108. How can phage companies protect their intellectual property? This week, we bring you an interview with Michele Wales, founder of the legal firm InHouse Patent Counsel. She tells us about the unique challenges phage companies face in protecting their IP, and why she's optimistic about what's to come. 60.Jessica Sacher
  109. Phage Futures Europe 2019: Meeting Recap Last Fall, we attended the Phage Futures Europe conference, which covered phage commercialization with a focus on how European regulators are thinking about phage therapy. This week, we present our full recap of that event, just in time to… 59.Jessica Sacher
  110. Bringing software to the phage field Happy New Year, phage enthusiasts! This week, we share how we plan to help the phage research community systematize and standardize phage data collection in 2020. 58.Jessica Sacher
  111. Constructing phage libraries for therapy This week, we're highlighting a paper published by Shelley Gibson and colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine and the VA Medical Center in Houston, Texas. They've constructed and characterized phage libraries against three pathogens, and… 53.Jessica Sacher
  112. The state of antibiotic resistance in the US and Canada This week, we provide an overview of two major new antibiotic resistance reports: one from the US (CDC) and one from Canada. We provide a few takeaways, briefly compare the reports, and hope to inspire you to dive in to learn more about the… 52.Jessica Sacher
  113. Year One of Capsid & Tail We’ve been publishing Capsid & Tail for a year now, and while some of you have been here since the early days, we know many of you have found us relatively recently. So this week, we’ve gone through our archive to dig up some of our… 49.Jessica Sacher
  114. Phages for musculoskeletal infections This week we highlight a recent paper on using phage therapy to treat severe musculoskeletal infections (osteomyelitis). A multidisciplinary group in Belgium made up of surgeons, infectious disease physicians, pharmacists, microbiologists… 48.Jessica Sacher
  115. The Nagoya Protocol and phages: an introduction You may have heard of the Nagoya Protocol in the context of isolating or sharing phages or bacteria. But what is the Nagoya Protocol, and how does it apply to phage research and development? This week, we've put together a primer to help… 47.Jessica Sacher
  116. Using Galaxy for phage genome annotation This week, we're covering an introductory phage genome annotation workshop that was taught at the 2019 Evergreen Phage Conference. The workshop, Phage Genomics with Galaxy and Apollo, was taught by Jason Gill, a professor at the Center for… 46.Jessica Sacher
  117. Evergreen Phage 2019: Meeting Recap Hello phage people! It’s been about a month since Evergreen, and we’re ready with our wrap-up post. We’ve covered highlights, themes, and what really excited us about the conference! 44.Jessica Sacher
  118. Feeding phages to chickens: one of the first farm trials How close are we to being able to treat chickens with phages? This week, we cover a recent study published by Viviana Clavijo and colleagues from the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. They tested a 6-phage cocktail on chickens in a… 43.Jessica Sacher
  119. Phage Directory expands! What’s changing and what’s staying the same This week is a special, exciting week for Phage Directory! We’ve got big news pertaining to funding, new directions, and a website makeover! And to balance out all the NEW, our feature article this week focuses on something that’s staying… 38.Jessica Sacher
  120. The Declaration of Helsinki and Phage Therapy When compassionate phage therapy case reports are described in published works, the Declaration of Helsinki often gets mentioned. But where did this declaration come from, why is it referenced so often, and how does it apply to phage… 32.Jessica Sacher
  121. How the Queen Astrid Military Hospital processes phage requests The Queen Astrid Military Hospital in Brussels has treated patients with phages since 2007, but lately, they've had a lot more phage therapy requests. This week, we're highlighting a recent report describing who's doing the requesting, what… 31.Jessica Sacher
  122. Improving access to phage therapy in India We interviewed Pranav Johri, a former phage therapy patient who founded Vitalis Phage Therapy to help others access phage therapy, especially in his home country of India. 30.Jessica Sacher
  123. Phage banks around the world Where can you buy phages, and where can you deposit yours? This week, we take a tour of phage banks around the world. 28.Jessica Sacher
  124. First case of engineered phage therapy This week, we highlight a new paper documenting the first use of engineered phages in human therapy, published yesterday by Rebekah Dedrick, Carlos Guerrero-Bustamante, and colleagues in Nature Medicine. 27.Jessica Sacher
  125. Book Review: The Perfect Predator What love, community, and phages can do: this week, we bring you a review of Steffanie Strathdee and Tom Patterson's phage therapy memoir, The Perfect Predator. 26.Jessica Sacher
  126. Collaboration leads to phage therapy success The first case of phage therapy in Israel shows how patients can benefit from collaborations between academia, medicine, military and biotech. 22.Jessica Sacher
  127. Using zebrafish to model phage therapy This week, we highlight a useful new animal model for the phage therapy community. 21.Jessica Sacher
  128. How do we commercialize phage therapy? A full recap of Phage Futures 2019 We attended Phage Futures 2019 at the end of January, and now present our full recap of the event. 20.Jessica Sacher
  129. What's it like to help with phage crowdsourcing? To understand what it's like to take part in phage crowdsourcing, we interviewed five labs who've contributed phages on behalf of a patient. 19.Jessica Sacher
  130. Studying phage-host coevolution in the lab How is phage-host coevolution studied in the lab, and what can it tell us? 18.Jessica Sacher
  131. Incentives for phage drug development A look into government incentives for antimicrobial development, and how they apply to phage therapeutic development. 17.Jessica Sacher
  132. Alternatives to patenting phages: trade secrecy In past issues, we covered what it means to patent something & whether patenting works for phages. In this issue, we dive into an alternative to patenting: trade secrecy. 16.Jessica Sacher
  133. Impressions of Phage Futures 2019 This week, we attended Phage Futures Congress 2019, which we found to be a huge success! 15.Jessica Sacher
  134. Patenting phages, part II: What makes something patentable? Simply having a patent on something doesn’t actually protect your invention. That patent has to actually hold up in court. How is this determined, and what kind of chance do phages stand? 14.Jessica Sacher
  135. Breaking down phage patentability You may have heard through the grapevine that “phages can’t be patented”, but several phage patents exist, and biotech and pharma are investing in phage-based therapeutics. What’s the deal? 13.Jessica Sacher
  136. Where in the world (and how) can I get phage therapy? People are starting to ask questions about phage therapy. We need your help to put together an FAQ. Do they qualify? How can they get it, and where do they get it? 12.Jessica Sacher
  137. New reporting standards for uncultivated viral genomes Have you submitted genome sequences for phages that haven’t been cultured yet? Here’s what you should report if and when you do. 11.Jessica Sacher
  138. Capsids in the classroom (and a challenge for 2019) This week, we’re sharing insights from our experience talking to middle school kids about phages, phage therapy, and Phage Directory. 10.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  139. Tweaking the microbiome with phages: Q&A with BiomX CBO Assaf Oron This week, we bring you a Q&A with BiomX CBO Assaf Oron. 9.Jessica Sacher, Jan Zheng
  140. Belgium’s new brand of phage therapy This week, we explore Belgium's unique new way of treating patients with phages... 8.Jessica Sacher
  141. Special issue: An update on our current phage crowdsourcing campaign To provide a window into what happens during a phage hunt, we're devoting this issue to showing some of what's happened over the last three weeks. We've put together an infographic to help illustrate how labs across the globe have come… 7.Jessica Sacher
  142. Happy (American) Thanksgiving! We’re incredibly humbled by all the wonderful feedback and for your help in spreading the word about Capsid & Tail and Phage Directory. Thank you!! 6.Jessica Sacher
  143. Reflecting on our first year For this week’s issue, we’d like to reflect on our first year as Phage Directory. We’re one year old this week! 5.Jessica Sacher
  144. Phage crowdsourcing This is the second post in a series on how patients are being treated with phages outside of traditional clinical trials. 4.Jessica Sacher
  145. "The eIND route”: How do people currently get phage therapy in the US? This is the first of a series of posts about how patients are being treated with phages outside of traditional clinical trials. 3.Jessica Sacher
  146. Clinical trials: Are phages “there yet”? You may have heard that phages "still haven’t made it through clinical trials.” What does this mean, and is anyone making any progress on this? Do you have experience with or knowledge of clinical trials? If you have anything to add,… 2.Jessica Sacher
  147. Phage therapy returns to the US Welcome to the first issue of Capsid & Tail, a mini-periodical of links, topics, and commentary that covers the ins and outs of the phage world. 1.Jessica Sacher