A revelatory treatment for patients with life-threatening infectious diseases is being pioneered in Melbourne by researchers at The Alfred and Monash University.
VICPhage , a clinical partnership between The Alfred and Monash, is one of the first in Australia to offer end-to-end capacity in phage therapy to treat some of the most challenging infections.
It involves injecting a patient with viruses called bacteriophages, or phages for short, to kill bacterial infections that have not responded to other treatments.
Professor Anton Peleg , Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases at The Alfred and Monash University and the Centre to Impact AMR at Monash University, is co-lead of VICPhage and senior author of a new paper published in Nature Medicine .
He said while the concept of phage therapy is not new, VICPhage is pioneering a contemporary approach, offering a compassionate-use phage therapy service, as well as being involved in crucially important, multicentre clinical trials.
"Phages were actually first used early in the 1900s, but were effectively cast aside with the introduction of antibiotics," Professor Peleg said.
"As we now face the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance, research on alternative therapies such as phage therapy is critically important to modern medicine.
"The work we are doing builds on the foundation of generations past but takes advantage of the huge innovations in science and technology to harness its potential for personalised treatments that could revolutionise the way we treat infectious disease."
The new paper published in Nature Medicine details their first patient case in 2022, and the first ever in Victoria.
The patient was a 22-year-old with cystic fibrosis who had severe, recurrent infections with a bacteria that had become resistant to almost all available antibiotics.
Currently, clinicians apply to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for compassionate-use before administering phage therapy to patients.
This includes demonstrating that patients have exhausted all other treatment options and the infection is threatening their life, limb or function.
Dr Fernando Gordillo-Altamirano , a postdoctoral researcher in the Peleg Phage Translational Lab in the Department of Infectious Diseases at The Alfred and Monash University, working on the VICPhage initiative and first author of the paper, said the case provided two findings that will benefit future phage therapy patients.
"We discovered that phage therapy didn't work in this patient because he had pre-existing antibodies against the phage," Dr Gordillo-Altamirano said.
"These antibodies destroyed the phages before they could kill the infection.
"We were swiftly able to determine how to test subsequent patients to see if they already have antibodies against particular phages, in order to adapt our treatment."
It is hoped that VICPhage's work will see the treatment viable and accessible to more patients with complex infections caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens.
Professor Jeremy Barr , from the School of Biological Sciences and Centre to Impact AMR at Monash University, co-leads VICPhage and leads the Monash Phage Foundry, where the clinical-grade phages were produced.
"This was a pivotal phage therapy case of a very difficult-to-treat infection," Professor Barr said.
"What we have learnt here will allow us to provide faster and more effective phage treatments in the future.
"With collaborators around Australia, we are reviewing methodologies, phage production approaches, and data collection from treated patients across the country.
"There's still a long road ahead, but it's one we are determined to travel as this therapy has the potential to save hundreds of lives for patients suffering from serious and life-threatening infectious disease."
Read the research paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-026-04301-0
