Welcome to PHAVES!
During the pandemic, we heard from many of you that you were missing out on hearing about each other's phage work, and missing talking to your fellow phage researchers and developers! So we started a series of virtual phage events in 2020 called PHAVES.
We like to experiment with a range of formats, including seminars, AMAs, interviews, panels and more! Plus, we love to incorporate opportunities to meet and chat with other phage enthusiasts.
Event recordings: Most events are recorded and shared in Capsid & Tail and on YouTube after the fact. (Prospective speakers, let us know anytime if this will be an issue for you). Videos are posted on our Youtube channel: https://phage.directory/youtube
Event summaries: Event summaries are written up and published in Capsid & Tail, our weekly newsletter, usually the third week of each month. Sign up to receive it here: https://phage.directory/capsid
Subscribe to our PHAVES Events Series
Our events occur approximately every month, and we will email you the details the day of the event. Remembering to sign up for every event can get tedious, so you can just sign up here if you'd like to get updates for every event! (If it gets to be too much, unsubscribing is easy).
Once you're signed up, event details will be sent the day of each event.
Upcoming PHAVES

Freedom from antibiotic purgatory?: Salvage phage therapy for cure of spinal hardware infection
May 12, 2pm Mountain Time
An elderly female patient with progressively worsening chronic low back pain presented to the University of Colorado Hospital for a challenging spinal fixation surgery in the Summer 2020. In the weeks that followed, her course was complicated by tissue dehiscence along the spinal surgical incision with underlying vertebral osteomyelitis secondary to Pseudomonas aeruginosa hardware infection. Given the patient’s age and history of cerebral vascular aneurysms, her medical team determined that she was a poor candidate for oral quinolone suppression therapy of the hardware infection. No longer a surgical candidate and unwilling to spend her life on chronic intravenous antibiotic therapy, the patient faced the decision of hospice versus experimental phage therapy. Bravely, she chose the latter. In partnership with collaborators at Yale University, we detail our successful single patient experience of phage therapy against P. aeruginosaspinal hardware infection. If the outcome were to hold, to the best of our knowledge, this case would represent the first cure of a spinal hardware infection with salvage phage therapy.
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Details for individual events will be sent out right before the event starts.

Laura Damioli, MD
Assistant Professor Infectious Diseases, Director, Orthopedic Infectious Diseases | University of Colorado Denver

Greg Canfield, MD, PhD
ID Fellow, PGY6 | Division of Infectious Diseases, CU Anschutz

Viral Host Range Database, an online tool for recording, analyzing and disseminating virus-host interactions
May 18, 5pm CEST (Paris time)
Viruses are ubiquitous and often infect more than one host. Since decades, hundreds of scientists have performed experiments to characterize the host range of bacteriophages. The number of these experiments has dramatically increased the past few years because of the revived interest for phage therapy. However, results from these interaction tests are rarely published under an exploitable format easily accessible to the community.
We conceived the viral host range database (VHRdb, https://viralhostrangedb.pasteur.cloud//) as an online resource that centralizes experimental host range data. The VHRdb is a unique tool that allows users to identify suitable hosts for a given virus and conversely a list of viruses infecting specific hosts. Moreover, independent sets of data can be compared to generate, visualize and rank outputs.
The VHRdb is open to contribution by any user upon registration. Contributed data are public or can remain private until publication, if any. Links to publications and sequence identifiers can be implemented, when available. Initiated from data obtained from interaction tests between bacteriophages and bacteria, the design of the VHRdb is compatible with viruses infecting all living forms.
The VHRdb represents a unique resource for the community to rapidly find or disseminate the range of hosts suitable for a virus, an information that can have broad interest for educational, scientific, medical and applied purposes.
Here is the link to the associated publication:
https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/advance-article/doi/10.1093/bioinformatics/btab070/6140780
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Details for individual events will be sent out right before the event starts.

Quentin Lamy-Besnier
PhD Candidate at Institut Pasteur in Dr. Laurent Debarbieux’s Bacteriophage, Bacterium Host laboratory
Previous PHAVES

Interview with Dr. Randy Fish on successfully treating diabetic foot wounds with phages

Dr. Randy Fish, DPM
Podiatrist in chronic wound healing and clinical research using bacteriophage in diabetic foot infections, Tacoma Diabetic Foot Clinic and PhageBiotics Research Foundation

Jack of all strains, master of none? Host range and efficacy in phages of a phytopathogenic bacterium

Clara Torres-Barceló
Plant Pathology Unit, INRAE, Avignon, France

Phage Therapy: The Australian Experience

Jonathan Iredell
Senior Infectious Diseases Specialist at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research, Sydney, Australia

Phages as a teaching tool, and stories from 60 years of phage
Head of the phage biology lab and professor emeritus at the Evergreen State College

2021 Kickoff party!
Volunteer PHAVES Coordinator
Co-founder of Phage Directory
Co-founder of Phage Directory

Learning How to Engineer Genomes by Building Phage
Assistant Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, and CSO of Hyperdrive Science

Phage-inducible chromosomal islands (PICIs), piracy in the phage world and insights on their application in biotechnology
Postdoc at University of Copenhagen

Up scaling phage production in a small biotech company
Principle Bacteriophage Scientist at Fixed Phage

The potential of phage therapy in aquaculture
Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, and co-founder of Aquatic Biologicals

TAILORing Phage Therapy for the Gut and Beyond
Maresso Lab, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, United States Tailor Service Center, Houston, TX, United States

Ask Me Anything: Dr. Evelien Adriaenssens answers questions about phage taxonomy, viromics, and her transcontinental career progression from PhD student to postdoc to new PI
Group Leader at the Quadram Institute Bioscience and Chair of the Bacterial and Archaeal Viruses Subcommittee of the ICTV

All About Vitalis: How Pranav and Apurva Johri improved phage therapy access in India
Co-founder of Vitalis Phage Therapy
Co-founder of Vitalis Phage Therapy

Boosting phage exploration by Artificial Intelligence: what could data science do for your research?
R&D Manager, AI Software Engineer , PhD student. PhageAI co-creator, Phages2050 promoter. @ptynecki

Combined effect of bacteriophage treatment and chemical disinfection on surface-associated Pseudomonas aeruginosa
PhD, postdoctoral fellow at Eawag

Virtual phage series kick-off party: Welcome to PHAVES!
Co-founder of Phage Directory
Co-founder of Phage Directory
Present, or suggest a speaker, topic!
Do you have a topic in mind or a person you'd love to hear from? (Eg. I'd like to hear Betty Kutter give an overview of the history of phage therapy; or, I'd like to hear phage therapy biotech companies discuss how they're designing their clinical trials).
Submit your nominations on Slack: https://phage.directory/slack
Email us at: [email protected]
Or sign up to speak below:
Sign Up to Present
[October 2020 Update]: Our seminar schedule for 2020 is full, but we are considering If launching PHAVES Season 2 for 2021. If you're interested in presenting your research or your company's products in 2021, please sign up below. We'll get in touch to chat about the best format, length, and specifics.
Credits
PHAVES is brought to you thanks to the hard work of the following individuals!
Co-founder of Phage Directory
Volunteer PHAVES Coordinator
Co-founder of Phage Directory