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Phage therapy’s latest makeover

Nature Biotechnology volume 37, pages 581–586 (2019)Cite this article

A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 21 May 2019

This article has been updated

As issues of product consistency, standardization and specificity are being tackled, can phage therapeutics—long oversold and overhyped—finally realize their antibacterial potential?

This news follows last year’s launch of a phage translational research center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), another sign of optimism in this old but controversial approach for treating bacterial infections. Supported with a three-year, $1.2 million grant from the UCSD chancellor, the new Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH) is applying “the same principles of clinical evaluation and development to phage therapy that would be applied to any other therapeutic entity,” says center co-director Robert Schooley, a physician and infectious disease specialist at UCSD.

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Change history

  • 21 May 2019

    In the version of this article initially published, we listed 13 companies that were developing phage therapies a decade ago and stated that only a few are still active today. Missing from the active list was Phico Therapeutics of Bourn, UK. In addition, a location (Canada) has been added for PhageTech, and “Last May” has been changed to “In May” at the beginning of the article. The errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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  1. Portland, Maine, USA

    Charles Schmidt

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  1. Charles Schmidt
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Schmidt, C. Phage therapy’s latest makeover. Nat Biotechnol 37, 581–586 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0133-z

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