Ongoing Projects

Phage Therapy

The frontline research topic are ‘bacteriophages’, often just referred to as ‘phages’, and their clinical use as anti-bacterial agents. Phages are bacterial viruses that hijack bacteria to replicate themselves. At the end of their life cycle, these viruses achieve their anti-bacterial effect when they lyse and kill the bacteria to release their progeny. Over the last decade, we systematically evaluated phage-bacteria interactions in various settings, including in silico, in vitro, ex-vivo, in vivo, using experimental models of infection in rodents, and finally in humans.

Currently we are:

1. evaluating the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) parameters that best predict phage therapy clinical success in in vitro pharmacological and rodent models of infection using notorious human pathogens (in particular S. aureus, P. aeruginosa).
2. building a system to understand the effect of antibiotics on phage-bacteria interactions, as phage therapy will be mainly considered in the clinics as adjunctive therapy to antibiotics.
3. deciphering the molecular reasons behind the clinical trial failure.

Funding

1. Swiss National Science Foundation: Prophylaxis and Treatment of Staphylococcus spp. Intravascular and Extravascular Infections with Phages
2. Swiss National Science Foundation: Refining phage and antibiotic dosing for effective treatment of multidrug resistant bacterial infections

Collaborative Projects

      1. Inselspital, Bern University Hospital and University of Bern

• Department of Infectious Diseases, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital (Prof. H. Furrer, MD)
• Institute for Infectious Diseases (IFIK), University of Bern (Prof. S. Leib, MD, Dr. Alban Ramette)
• Department of Cardiology, Bern University Hospital  (Prof Lukas Hunziker, Dr. Bruno Schnegg, Dr. Monika Fürholz)

      2. National collaborations

• Department of Fundamental Microbiology, University of Lausanne (Dr. G. Resch, PhD)
• CHUV, University Hospital of Lausanne (Dr. P. Eggimann, Dr. J.-L. Pagani)
• SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Yverdon (C. Peña-Reyes)

       3. International collaborations

• Microbiology and Immunobiology, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, USA (Dr. L. G. Rahme, MD, PhD, MSc, Professor of Surgery)