Antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a grave threat to human health. Bacteriophage (phage) therapy uses viruses targeting bacteria to treat infections. We have developed a phage therapy program at the University of Pittsburgh which offers custom phage cocktails to treat individual patients with bacterial infections under compassionate use. We isolate and characterize phages that target antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens, perform phage susceptibility testing to match infecting strains with phages that can kill them, manufacture and test custom phage cocktails for individual patient use, and follow patients receiving this therapy to study what happens to them.
