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

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...

There is no single price for phage therapy. What a patient ultimately pays depends on the country, whether treatment is delivered through a clinical trial or compassionate-access pathway, whether an existing phage already matches the infection, whether a new preparation must be developed, and how much conventional medical care is required alongside the phages. In many cases, the bacteriophages themselves are only one part of the total expense.  The first potential cost appears before treatment begins. Because bacteriophages can be highly strain-specific, the patient's bacterium usually has to be isolated and tested against available phages. This may involve bacterial culture, identification, antimicrobial susceptibility testing, phage susceptibility testing or a phagogram, and shipment of the isolate to a specialized laboratory. If an existing therapeutic phage is active, preparation can be relatively straightforward. If no suitable phage is available, laboratories may need to scre...