Synthetic Phage

Since 2018, phage therapy, the process of using bacteriophages (phages, the viruses that infect bacteria) to cure bacterial disease, has been made a reality in Belgium. In all Belgian university hospitals, patients are now being treated with phage preparations, which are exclusively produced in the Laboratory for Molecular and Cellular Technology (LabMCT) of the Queen Astrid Military Hospital (QAMH) in Brussels, Belgium. However, one phage can only infect a part of one single bacterial species and bacterial phage resistance readily emerges. These personalized phage therapy approaches thus require large therapeutic phage banks, which need to be regularly updated with new phages. In addition, the patient’s bacterial strains and matching phages need to be sent to and from the QAMH, respectively. The Synphage study will provide proof of principle for an alternative and innovative phage production system, focusing on Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumoniae phages, and based on artificial intelligence (AI) and synthetic biology concepts. The proposed cell-free phage production process will allow for the instant and on-site synthetic production of phages and will not require phage banks or the circulation of bacterial isolates and phages.

The project HFM/21-10 - SynPhage is financed under the DFR call.