Tackling the Global Antibiotic Resistance Crisis

• Developing online versions of our teaching materials with support from a new grant from the Mozilla Foundation

• Applying for more grants for future workshops, including being selected as a finalist for the MIT Solve Challenge on solutions for Health Security & Pandemics

• Interviewing with journalists for articles in The Guardian and Le Courrier (with future articles in the works — stay tuned!)

• Publishing a peer-reviewed scientific manuscript on the role that the WHO could play in implementing phage therapy in developing countries

• Drafting guideline documents that developing country government leaders might refer to as they begin to make regulatory decisions about the phage products that are now being developed by our workshop participants

In drafting those guideline documents, Dr. Tobi Nagel has been meeting virtually with teams of experts from the US FDA who regulate phage products as antibiotic alternatives for food, animals and people. The goal is to compile advice from those experts, as well as from their counterparts in Europe, in order to share that knowledge with regulatory leaders in the developing world. 

Since existing governmental regulatory systems were established to oversee traditional types of drugs — different from phages, which are naturally occurring viruses — officials in the US and Europe are now re-interpreting their regulatory schemes to accommodate phage products. However, this clarification process has not yet started in Africa. Thus, in partnership with African phage researchers, Tobi is now beginning to plan for a symposium in Africa through which they will share lessons learned from US and European regulatory officials. This will be an important and exciting step as we help to implement phage products in the developing world!