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

A strategic partnership between two biotechnology companies On 30 October 2026, Phileo by Lesaffre and Chilean biotechnology company PhageLab announced a strategic partnership to develop and commercialise bacteriophage-based solutions for poultry production. Their collaboration will initially target two major bacterial pathogens, Salmonella and pathogenic Escherichia coli , with the ambition of improving animal health, production performance and food safety. The companies intend to begin deploying their solutions in Latin America before progressively expanding their activities internationally. The agreement brings together two companies with complementary expertise. Phileo contributes its experience in microbial solutions, animal nutrition and feed additives, as well as its international commercial network. PhageLab brings its bacteriophage research, bacterial diagnostic capabilities and technology for developing targeted phage formulations. Their objective is to combine these capabil...

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...