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

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...

Bacteriophages are beginning to move from experimental plant pathology into commercial crop protection. Several phage-based bactericides are now registered in the United States, China has registered its first crop bacteriophage pesticide, European growers have received temporary access to phage products against fire blight, and additional programmes are progressing through regulatory development in North America, Europe and Latin America. The market remains much smaller than the markets for conventional pesticides or microbial biocontrol products. It is also easy to misunderstand. A company announcing a distribution agreement does not necessarily mean that its product is legally authorized for use in that country. A successful field trial does not equal registration, and an emergency authorization valid for a few months in one European country is not the same as an EU-wide approval. This guide separates commercially registered products from temporary authorizations and development prog...

Phage therapy is not an FDA-approved treatment in the United States as of October 2026. For a patient with a difficult bacterial infection, access generally follows one of two routes: enrollment in a clinical trial or FDA expanded access, commonly called compassionate use. The second route can allow an individual patient to receive an investigational bacteriophage when the infection is serious or immediately life-threatening, satisfactory alternatives are unavailable, the expected benefit justifies the risk and a suitable phage product can actually be obtained. The process is medical rather than consumer-facing: patients cannot simply order therapeutic phages or file an application themselves. A licensed physician must take responsibility for the treatment and regulatory process. For most patients, the best first step is therefore not contacting dozens of phage laboratories independently but finding an infectious-disease physician willing to review the case. The physician will need a w...