Preface:
The 7th targeted Phage Therapy Congress 2024 was held in Malta on 20-21 June. There were 1 keynote report, 17 invited reports, nearly 20 oral briefings and more than 10 poster presentations, more than 100 medical, academic, law firm and industry professionals from 35 countries attended the conference. After hesitating to attend the last conference, held in Paris, I received an email advertisement for the event earlier this year, and when I saw the big names I was going to invite, I decided to go. Behind the coincidence, Professor Tong Yigang received an invitation from the meeting group after no travel plans, recommended me to get a valuable opportunity to report. This article briefly listed some of the oral report, if you are interested in which report welcome to leave a message, the follow-up I will sub-rapporteur or category for detailed introduction.
Keynote address：
Clinical Trials in Phage Therapeutics: Looking Under the Hood.
Speaker: Robert T. Schooley, University of California, San Diego Director of the division of infectious diseases and former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID) , attending physician and UCSD co-director of the Center for innovative phage applications and treatment (IPATH) at the US phage therapy restart landmark event, the pyramid case.
Keywords: American phage therapy approval policy, why do phage therapy clinical trials need to be done, what key issues should be concerned in phage therapy clinical trials.
Invited Report 1:
Mycobacteriophages and Their Therapeutic Potential
Speaker: Graham F. Hatfull is a member of the elite membership of the National Academy of Sciences, a University of Pittsburgh professor in the Albertine family, a professor at the Howard Hughes Institute for Medical Research, and a recipient of the European Mycobacterial Society Lifetime Achievement Award, top Dog in the field of mycobacterial phages, holder of the top issue on phage therapy (Cell 2023, Nat Med 2019 & 2021) , Director of the SEA-PHAGES education program.
Keywords: 470 phage therapy requests/40 treatment cases, 40% of mycobacteria are smooth-type therapeutic-free phages, how to modify mycobacterial phages for therapy.
Guest Post 2:
Magistral Phage Preparations: Is This the Model for Everyone? (phage place preparation: Is it your style?)
Speaker: Jean-Paul Pirnay, Queen Astrid Military Hospital, Belgium, leader of Belgian Phage therapy, author of the science fiction novel Phage Hunter (pen name Phage Clown) , keynote speaker of the 2023 Shanghai Phage Assembly, the largest case-scale phage therapy reporter to date (Nat Microbial, 2024) .
Keywords: local preparation pathway of personalized phage therapy in Belgium, 100 cases of personalized phage therapy results.
Invited Report 3:
Leveraging Evolutionary Trade-Offs in Development of Phage Therapy
Speaker: Paul Turner, Rachel Carson Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, director of the bacteriophage biotherapy center, director of the Institute for Quantitative Biology, Professor of Yale School of Medicine Microbiology, Yale University, fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Study on bacteriophage of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Keywords cystic fibrosis P. aeruginosa phage therapy in 9 cases (Nat Med review) , phage steering, no escape (phage + antibiotics targeting resistance mechanisms) .
Invited Report 4:
The Phageome in Normal and Inflamed Human Skin.
Speakers: Wolfgang Weninger, head of the Austrian Department of Medical University of Vienna Dermatology and head of the Department of Dermatology at the Vienna General Hospital, until 2018, he was head of dermatology at the Department of Dermatology at the Sydney School of Medicine and the Royal Sydney Alfred the Great Prince’s Hospital.
Keywords: How to study the difference between the skin phage group, normal skin and atopic dermatitis skin phage group, and the presence or absence of phages specific to normal or inflamed skin.
Guest Post 5:
Regulatory restrictions vs. Human Rights, the Hippocratic oath and the Freedom of therapy– The legal aspect of phage therapy
Speaker: Barbara Brenner, founder of the German law firm Brenner, an expert in medical law and human rights law.
Keywords: are randomized controlled clinical trials ethical, is the safety of phage agents really an issue, and is GMP really necessary.
Invited Report 6:
Quality control of phage Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (Apis) in Belgium
Reporter: Pieter-jan Ceyssens, Belgium”Health Commission” Sciensano phage scientist, Belgium local preparation phage quality control leader.
Keywords: quality control of phage preparations, comparison of prephage contamination, endotoxin and thermometry sources in phage preparation.
Invited Report 7:
Phage Therapy: A Glimpse into Clinical Studies Involving Over 150 Cases
Reporter: Wu Nannan, Shanghai bacteriophage treatment team with salt, bacteriophage sprayer bulk carriers and distributors, Mandarin and English rising space holder.
Keywords: 90 years history of phage therapy in China, 150 cases of phage therapy in Shanghai, how to give doctors personalized phage within 24 hours.
Oral Presentation 1:
Determining the Main Causes of Phage Resistance in Clinical Strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Reporter: Cindy Fevre, Chief Scientific Officer of Phaxiam Therapeutics, a French bacteriophage-listed company,
Keywords: 102 patients treated, Pseudomonas aeruginosa phage coverage of 75% , Staphylococcus aureus phage coverage of 98% , detection of phage sensitivity as with the antibiotic MIC. Oral Presentation 2: GMP and non-GMP manufacturing for bacteriophages speaker: Frenk Smrekar, CEO, world-leading CMO bacteriophage, Jafral, Slovenia. Keywords: GMP/non-GMP phage production process, over 50 phage active pharmaceutical ingredients for investigator-initiated clinical trials, 12 phage drugs approved by FDA/TGA/EMA for pharmaceutical company-initiated clinical trials.
