MAGICoPHAGE: magistral cocktail of phage.

Phage therapy represents an alternative to conventional antibiotic therapy, especially in multi-resistant infections. It is an antibacterial approach whereby bacterial viruses (‘phages’) infect and lyse bacteria to cure or prevent diseases. Phages in the environment are constantly evolving to overcome bacterial resistance and thus offer a functionally limitless, sustainable, source of new antimicrobials. Despite this, major obstacles for the clinical application of phages remain at present. Firstly, still too often, medical community and patients remain with a negative perception of phages as health-threatening ‘viruses’. Secondly, a specific framework for phage therapy in the current Medicinal Product Regulation is lacking despite the numerous case reports on the successful use of phages treating patients with severe antibiotic-resistant infections. These cases were realized under the umbrella of either the Declaration of Helsinki or Compassionate use. To progress towards clinical use and to help address the antibiotic resistance crisis, the Belgian health authorities, together with the Queen Astrid military hospital in Brussels and its Belgian collaborators (among which KU Leuven) undertook a pioneering work in 2016 to encourage the implementation within hospital context of a magistral phage therapy, based on sound safety data and production criteria. The objective is to allow administration of personalized phages-based compositions that are selected based on the spectrum of pathogens detected at the infected site of the patient. Therefore, the main objective of this MAGICoPHAGE Project is to help expand the use of the MAGISTRAL PHAGE THERAPY in a large number of hospitals in EU to accelerate implementation of PERSONALIZED Phage Therapy as an evidence- based, effective, and sustainable approach to fight bacterial infections of major concern.