Genetically modified bacteriophages as tools to study and accelerate phage therapy

Bacteriophages or phages are viruses that specifically target their host bacteria and can be used effectively as alternatives to antibiotics. With the progress in synthetic biology, bacteriophages can be genetically modified to obtain preferred characteristics for a variety of applications.

In my talk, I will describe work that we have done in the lab to genetically modify bacteriophages and how we have used these to understand better the molecular and cellular mechanisms of phage therapy and help phage therapy progress.

I will also present recent published work from my lab on bacteriophages, which we genetically modified to obtain the ability to invade human cells in high rates and to target intracellular bacteria.

Read more about Dr Sagona's research