Bacteriophage Biology & Therapeutics SIG – March 2019 Update

For the first Bacteriophage Biology & Therapeutics SIG posting of 2019, I would like to provide an update on the recent Microbiology Australia issue that focused on bacteriophages, highlight a number of relevant conferences and initiatives that may be of interest and provide some details on the SIG goals for 2019.

 Microbiology Australia – March 2019

As some of you may have already seen, the latest issue of Microbiology Australia, which is the journal of the Australia Society for Microbiology, was entirely dedicated to bacteriophages. The conception of this special issue arose from an ‘Expert Round Table’ on the acceptance and re-implementation of bacteriophage therapy, which was held during an international conference at the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2015. As participants of the round table, Ìpek Kurtböke and Nina Chanishvili began working on this issue, with assistance from Jeremy Barr as the current SIG convenor. The issue contains a number of In Focus and Lab Report articles from SIG members, including:

·      “The future of phage clinical trials in Australia” written by Keith Potent.
·      “Bacteriophage therapy for severe infections” written by Carola Venturini, Aleksandra Petrovic Fabijan and Ruby Lin
·      “Phage research in ‘organ-on-chip’ devices” written by Wai Hoe Chin and Jeremy Barr
·      “Bacteriophages as biocontrol agents in aquaculture” written by Son Tuan Le and Ìpek Kurtböke
·      “Use of bacteriophages as biological control agents in horticulture” written by Rhianna O’Regan, Annaleise Wilson and Ìpek Kurtböke

The issue also includes a number of important contributions from international bacteriophage researchers and collaborators from the Eliava Institute in Georgia, the Queen Astrid Hospital in Belgium, Masaryk University in Czech Republic and the Phage Directory. Finally, the issue concludes with an introduction to the Bacteriophage Biology & Therapeutics SIG.

I encourage everybody to read the issue and thank all SIG members for their contributions toward this issue. The issue is freely available at the Microbiology Australia website and you can find a.pdf download of the issue here.

Bacteriophage Conferences and initiatives for 2019

The field of phage biology and therapy is rapidly growing and we are seeing an increased number of established and early career researchers joining the field. This year there are a number of well-established conferences that will be running, as well as a number of new initiatives and meetings that may be of interest to SIG members.
 

Conferences:

ASM2019 Meeting – Adelaide, Australia – 30^th June­–4^th July

The national ASM conference will be held in Adelaide this year and already has an impressive list of international keynote speakers. The SIG has proposed a Bacteriophage session to the conference organisers and we encourage SIG members to submit their abstracts for consideration at the conference. We will also be holding our SIG’s annual general meeting during the conference.

Evergreen Phage Meeting – Evergreen, USA – 4^th–9^th August

The biennial Evergreen International Phage Meeting will hold its 23^rd conference this year at Evergreen College outside of Seattle, USA. This is one of two premier phage conferences that attracts a diverse collection of phage researchers from across the globe. Last meeting had over 200 participants from 41 countries, and this year looks to be even bigger. This is an excellent conference to attend for any researchers or students looking to present exciting new results. It is also a great chance to meet and connect with other international phage researchers.

Phage Futures Europe – Belgium – 25^th–26^th September

The Phage Futures meetings is a recently launched conference that had its first meeting in Washington D.C., USA in January this year. The conference had a stronger focus on translating phage-based applications and technologies, with a number of companies and entrepreneurs presenting and attending, including; Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Eligo Biosciences and C3J Therapeutics. A second Phage Futures conference will be held later this year in Belgium and it looks to continue its strong commercialisation theme. This will be a great conference to attend for any researchers or students looking to commercialise their phage research or looking for biotech collaborations and job opportunities.

Initiatives:

Phage Directory – International collaborative network

The Phage Directory was launched by Jessica Sacher and Jan Zheng in 2018 in an effort to bring together the international phage community. The directory runs a weekly email blog that provides summaries on recent phage publications, expert summaries on hot topics (e.g., commercialisation pathways and compassionate usage pathways), job postings and calls for phages for compassionate usage cases. It is an excellent and up-to-date resource that provides a weekly pulse on phage research across the world. I encourage all SIG members to sign up to their free weekly email blog “Capsid & Tail” and to list their labs and phages on their database.

PHAGE Therapy, Applications, and Research – Specialist journal launching in 2019

A new PHAGE journal was recently announced by Mary Ann Liebert inc., publishers as the only peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the burgeoning field of bacteriophage research and its applications. The journal will be spearheaded by Editor-in-Chief, Marth Clokie, and with Jeremy Barr serving as an Associate Editor. PHAGE will be published quarterly online and in print, will have no publication charges for the first one-two years followed by a move to a hybrid library-subscription and Open Access charge model, which is in-line with other research journals. A preview issue is planned for summer 2019 and we encourage researchers to consider the journal for their research publications.

SIG goals for 2019

Finally, as we move toward our second year as an ASM SIG, I wanted to share with everyone an update on our goals over the coming year. Primarily, we are aimed at continuing to build and support bacteriophage research within Australia and abroad. Towards this we are continuing to reach out and network with phage researchers across Australia with the goal of building new collaborative research projects, organising conference sessions, assisting with networking and supporting Australian research.

Towards this goal we will continue to host this blog site as a way to communicate with our SIG members. Throughout the year I will be encouraging researchers to contribute short posts on their area of phage research and other related topics. Any early career researchers who are interested in communicating their research through this blog or other resources, please let me know. We are further looking at additional ways to increase communication with our SIG members, including Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets.

We will again be holding our Annual General Meeting (AGM) at this years’ ASM2019 in Adelaide. I encourage everyone to attend the meeting and the AGM if possible. During this meeting we will hold an open forum to hear from SIG members and their suggestions for the SIG.

Finally, the major goal for the SIG this year will be the organisation of an Australia phage workshop and symposia that we aim to hold in 2020. This purpose of this workshop would be to have as many Australian phage researchers to attend as possible, discuss the role the SIG can play in translating phage therapy and build further collaborations and communication between SIG members.

Cheers,

Jeremy J. Barr