Reinventing the fight against bacteria, one phage at a time.

Penicillin’s Ascendancy and the Decline of Phage Therapy: Medicine at the Close of World War II (1942–1945) Introduction: A Revolution Takes Hold In the early 1940s, the world of infectious disease treatment stood on the edge of a revolution. As World War II reached its crescendo, one compound reshaped not only battlefield medicine but the entire trajectory of 20th-century therapeutics: penicillin . Isolated in 1928 by Alexander Fleming, penicillin had remained a laboratory curiosity for more than a decade—until the pressures of global war, industrial urgency, and multinational collaboration launched it into the medical mainstream. While bacteriophage therapy continued to be deployed in the Soviet Union and scattered across neutral or resource-constrained countries, penicillin’s dramatic success on the Western front shifted the paradigm. Between 1942 and 1945, it went from a scarce experimental substance to a mass-produced miracle drug. Its adoption marked the beginning of the anti...

The Forgotten Front: Bacteriophage Therapy During World War II (1942–1945) Introduction: Medicine in the Shadows of Total War As World War II intensified between 1942 and 1945, the global medical landscape was reshaped by wartime necessity, geopolitical isolation, and scientific ingenuity. Amid the rise of industrial-scale antibiotic development in some parts of the world, a parallel, often overlooked story was unfolding: the persistent and at times groundbreaking use of bacteriophage therapy. Phage therapy—based on the use of viruses that infect and kill bacteria—had already been discovered in the early 20th century by Félix d’Herelle and others. While enthusiasm in Western Europe had begun to wane by the late 1930s, the global conflict brought new urgency and complexity to the fight against bacterial infections. With logistics disrupted, pharmaceuticals rationed, and field hospitals overwhelmed, phage therapy found both revival and reinvention in unexpected corners of the war-torn...

Bacteriophages in War: The Early Years of Phage Therapy in WWII (1939–1942) A Historical Analysis of the Forgotten Medical Weapon in Global Conflict Introduction: A War Against Infections When World War II erupted in 1939, nations mobilized not only their armies but their scientific and medical infrastructures. The spread of infectious diseases like dysentery, typhoid fever, gangrenous wound infections, and cholera posed a strategic threat, capable of incapacitating entire battalions. While the Allied and Axis powers would eventually turn to antibiotics—especially penicillin from 1943 onwards—those first years of war (1939–1942) saw other tools deployed to fight bacteria. Among these tools, bacteriophages—viruses that infect and kill bacteria—were explored and even actively used , especially in the Soviet Union, Poland, Germany, and to a more limited extent, France and the UK. At a time when antibiotics were still in limited supply or entirely experimental, phage therapy offered a ...

Synthetic Biology and the Rise of Engineered Phages: Precision Weapons Against Resistant Bacteria Artistic View As antimicrobial resistance continues to surge globally, the search for innovative therapeutic strategies has never been more urgent. Traditional antibiotics, once heralded as miracle drugs, are losing their efficacy at an alarming rate. In this context, synthetic biology—a field at the intersection of engineering and life sciences—is revolutionizing the way we design therapies against bacterial infections. One of its most promising frontiers is the development of engineered bacteriophages: viruses specifically reprogrammed to target and destroy pathogenic bacteria with unmatched precision. Unlike classical phage therapy, which relies on naturally occurring viruses, synthetic biology enables researchers to design tailor-made phages that overcome many of the limitations inherent to wild-type viruses, including resistance, host specificity, and regulatory unpredictability. Th...

Building the evidence for the use of bacteriophage therapy : This paper was published by the World Health Organization on the 26th of May 2025. We do not have any of the legal rights from the article and just want to share this tremendous and quite unusual paper from the WHO which underlines very well how phage therapy is really about and how to use it in the future. We took some of the most interesting parts to have a quite short but complete summary. Good reading ! Source :  www.tuftscimar.org Overview Bacteriophages (‎phages)‎ are a promising tool for addressing antimicrobial resistance, targeting harmful bacteria without disrupting beneficial microbiota. Safe for humans, they can enhance antibiotic treatments, particularly against resistant bacteria. The WHO Regional Office for Europe and the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Research and Development Hub are advancing evidence for phage applications through the “Vintage Innovation” initiative, adopting a One Health approach acros...

Bacteriophages and their use in combating antimicrobial resistance 17 February 2025, Republishing an article of (c) WHO visible here https://www.who.int/europe/news-room/fact-sheets/item/bacteriophages-and-their-use-in-combating-antimicrobial-resistance Key facts Bacteriophages (phages) are viruses that selectively target and kill bacteria. They are the most abundant commonly occurring natural entities, playing crucial roles in regulating bacterial populations and influencing microbial ecosystems. Phages are useful as they can destroy bacteria resistant to drugs such as antibiotics. Phages infect their bacterial hosts with great specificity. They do not infect human cells. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a serious global threat to our ability to treat bacterial infections. New antibiotics have often proved difficult and expensive to develop. This has led to an interest in an older approach to treating microbial infections by using phages. Phage therapy can be a promising tool ...