A thank-you to the international phage community

7-year old Australian patient successfully treated with community-sourced phages

The staff of the Infectious Diseases and Orthopaedics departments of the Children’s Hospital at Westmead and the Westmead Institute for Medical Research Iredell lab (Westmead Bacteriophage Therapy Team, New South Wales, Australia) would like to thank the international phage community for their overwhelming generosity in 2019 when a request was made through Phage Directory for compassionate access to phage products to treat our young patient with chronic osteomyelitis of the foot due to a multi-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection.

Our patient was treated for two weeks with a single phage in October 2019 and tolerated the treatment well. There was symptomatic improvement following the completion of treatment and although she continues to be treated with intravenous antibiotics, the potential need for amputation is currently deferred. There are currently no plans for further courses of treatment with phage for this patient unless there is further clinical deterioration.

We would like to thank the phage contributors: Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Ran Nir-Paz, Ronen Hazan, Rob Lavigne, Jeroen Wagemans, LyseNTech, Nikoline S Olsen, Witold Kot and Lars Hestbjerg Hansen.