Reinventing the fight against bacteria,
one phage at a time.

France has taken another step in the debate over the legal framework for bacteriophage therapy. On October 23, 2026, the National Assembly adopted amendment No. 2783 to the 2027 Social Security Financing Bill (Projet de loi de financement de la sécurité sociale, or PLFSS). The amendment addresses the conditions under which hospitals could prepare bacteriophage-based treatments, with the aim of facilitating access to personalized phage therapy while maintaining appropriate pharmaceutical safeguards. The official parliamentary record reports 16 votes in favour, 13 against and 26 abstentions. However, the amendment's adoption must be distinguished from the fate of the bill to which it was attached. On the same day, the National Assembly rejected the PLFSS 2027 as a whole at first reading. Consequently, the vote on amendment No. 2783 did not, by itself, establish a new legal framework or immediately change the conditions under which patients can receive phage therapy. The proposal rema...

French microbiologist David Bikard, Director of Research at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, has received the 2026 Richard Lounsbery Award , a major scientific distinction recognizing outstanding achievements in biology and medicine. Announced on October 27, 2026, during the Académie des sciences' awards ceremony, the distinction recognizes a body of research exploring the molecular interactions between bacteria and bacteriophages, the evolution of bacterial defense systems and the development of programmable genetic technologies. Bikard leads the Synthetic Biology Unit within the Institut Pasteur's Genomes and Genetics laboratory. His research addresses a fundamental question in microbiology: how do bacteria defend themselves against viruses, and how can the molecular mechanisms involved in this evolutionary struggle be transformed into tools for biotechnology and medicine? David Bikard, recipient of the 2026 Richard Lounsbery Award, recognised for his pioneering research on bac...

Bacteriophages are increasingly being investigated as treatments for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, but their potential extends far beyond antimicrobial therapy. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a research team led by Professor Angela Belcher has demonstrated how genetically engineered bacteriophages can become programmable nanovaccines capable of stimulating powerful antitumor immune responses. In a study published on August 27, 2025, in Advanced Materials , Shengnan Huang, Angela Belcher and colleagues developed an M13 bacteriophage-based cancer vaccine that increased neoantigen-specific CD8⁺ T-cell responses by approximately 24-fold and, when combined with anti-PD-1 immunotherapy, achieved complete regression of established colorectal tumors in 75% of treated mice . Professor Angela Belcher demonstrates the genetically programmable M13 bacteriophage during MIT's 2023 Dresselhaus Lecture. Her laboratory has since developed M13-based cancer nanovacci...

On October 20, 2026, American biotechnology company Radical Numerics announced that bacteriophages designed using its Omnii-1 artificial intelligence model had been administered to a human patient with an antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli infection. According to the company, the investigational phage cocktail included AI-designed variants of bacteriophage T7 and was administered under a single-patient expanded-access authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The announcement represents a potentially important development at the intersection of generative artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and personalized phage therapy. While genome language models have already demonstrated their ability to design functional bacteriophages in laboratory experiments, Radical Numerics reports taking a further step by incorporating AI-engineered viral variants into a preparation administered to a patient. Omnii-1, Radical Numerics' multimodal genome language model, ha...

Belgian biotechnology company Inteliphage is preparing to expand its bacteriophage manufacturing capabilities at BioPark Charleroi, taking over 1,200 m² of existing cleanroom facilities to support the development and production of phages for patients with difficult-to-treat bacterial infections. Announced on October 20, 2026, the expansion represents an important step in the company's strategy to connect rapid phage susceptibility testing with the supply of quality-controlled therapeutic preparations. The new facilities comprise five cleanrooms previously occupied by the American pharmaceutical services group Catalent. Inteliphage has taken over the premises since September 2026, avoiding the need to construct an entirely new manufacturing building. The company currently employs six people and intends to expand its workforce to approximately 30 as its activities develop. Inteliphage expands its phage manufacturing ambitions in Belgium. COO and co-founder Guillaume de Viron (left) a...

On October 20, 2026, French biotechnology company Phagos announced the public release of CAPHARD , a genomic artificial intelligence model designed to predict interactions between bacteriophages and bacterial strains. Accessible through Hugging Face, the platform enables researchers to evaluate the compatibility of sequenced phages with bacterial isolates or search a reference collection of 832 bacteriophages for candidates potentially capable of infecting a particular strain. The release follows several years of development supported by European supercomputing resources and represents a new application of large language models to phage discovery, microbiology and antimicrobial resistance research. The identification of suitable bacteriophages remains one of the principal technical challenges in developing personalized phage therapies. Unlike conventional broad-spectrum antibiotics, many phages exhibit highly restricted host ranges, sometimes distinguishing between closely related bact...