Welcome to PHAVES!
We've heard from many of you that you're missing out on hearing about each other's phage work, and that you already miss talking to your fellow phage researchers and developers! So we're planning a series of virtual phage events for 2020 we're calling PHAVES.
We'll be experimenting with a range of formats, including seminars, flash talks, interviews, panels and more! Plus, we'll be incorporating opportunities to meet and chat with other phage enthusiasts, so bring your video-on attire!
Subscribe to all future events
Our events occur every two weeks, 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 morning of each event.
Upcoming events
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
August 18, 2020
11:00 AM Eastern Time (GMT-4)
4:00 PM UK (GMT+1)
I’m Evelien Adriaenssens, Career Track Group Leader at the Quadram Institute Bioscience in Norwich, UK. My history in phage research goes back to 2007, when I was a Masters student at the University of Leuven majoring in agricultural engineering, but was supervised by Rob Lavigne who was doing some heavy-hitting phage research. I immediately knew that’s what I wanted to research for my PhD, which ended up being a combination of crop protection and phage biology, using phages to combat soft rot on potato plants. During my time in Rob’s lab, I got interested in phage taxonomy and after my PhD in 2012, I spent a month in Guelph with Andrew Kropinski to try and create order in the chaos of phage taxonomy (still an ongoing effort). I then combined my thirst for adventure with that for increased bioinformatics knowledge and did two postdocs in South Africa investigating viral communities in deserts using viral metagenomics (viromics). Based on that expertise, I was then recruited at the University of Liverpool as a postdoc to investigate pathogenic virus communities in the aquatic environment. In 2019, I started my research group at the Quadram Institute Bioscience, where I’m combining my viromics and phage expertise to investigate viral communities in the human gut and how we can exploit the bacteriophages in the gut to improve health. My team currently consists of a postdoc, a PhD student (with another joining in October), a Masters student and an Honours student, all working on different aspects of bacteriophages and gut viruses. I am currently the Chair of the Bacterial Viruses Subcommittee of ICTV (International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses).
As this is an AMA, you can ask me anything, but here are some topics that you might be interested in:
- Bacteriophage taxonomy
- Viromics and how it relates to bacteriophages
- Moving continents for a postdoc
- What it’s like being a new PI
Sign Up for this Event
Details for individual events will be sent out right before the event starts.
I am a Group Leader at the Quadram Institute Bioscience in Norwich (UK). I'm interested in phage discovery, genomics, taxonomy and viromics, and lead a group that investigates the role of phages in the human gut.
I am the Chair of the Bacterial and Archaeal Viruses Subcommittee of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV).
Previous events
Boosting phage exploration by Artificial Intelligence: what could data science do for your research?
This talk is going to showcase an overview of an AI-based platform called PhageAI, which is responsible for genome analysis, and feature extraction from DNA and proteins, which comes with awe-inspiring classification results for lifecycle and taxonomy. By PhageAI's example, we want to prove that AI-driven development is helpful and accurate during the automation of various tasks in the phage domain, which we believe will boost phage therapy in the future.
Thanks everyone! We had a fantastic turnout, and you can find the recap on Capsid & Tail at https://phage.directory/capsid/phaves-recap-july-2020
Speakers
Research & Development Manager, Software Engineer (AI), PhD student at Bialystok University of Technology in Poland, PhageAI co-creator and promoter of the Phages2050 movement. Twitter: @ptynecki
All About Vitalis: How Pranav and Apurva Johri improved phage therapy access in India
For PHAVES 4, we'll interview Pranav and Apurva Johri about their work starting Vitalis Phage Therapy and the impact it's had on access to phage therapy in India. After the interview, we'll host breakout sessions, so prepare to meet a few new faces!
Speakers
My journey goes from being India’s first known phage therapy patient to becoming an advocate, facilitator and enabler for phage therapy. My wife and I founded Vitalis Phage Therapy after the successful treatment of my antibiotic-resistant multi-pathogenic infection with phages at the Eliava Phage Therapy Center. The aim of Vitalis Phage Therapy is to make phage therapy accessible as a treatment option to every person suffering from an antibiotic resistant infection or chronic infection. Our activities include phage therapy awareness initiatives, establishing local treatment frameworks in India to enable people to access phage therapy without travelling to another country, establishing diagnostic testing with phages in India to provide quicker access to the phage therapy, and working with medical institutions to facilitate phage therapy for their patients. The main opportunities that we are looking at are collaborations for furthering access to phage therapy and funding to scale up our activities.
My husband, Pranav, and I founded Vitalis Phage Therapy after the successful treatment of his antibiotic-resistant multi-pathogenic chronic infection with phages at the Eliava Phage Therapy Center. As his primary caregiver during this time, I have seen first-hand the impact and suffering that chronic conditions can have on a person’s life. When we discovered phage therapy and Pranav underwent his treatment with phages, it gave him a new lease of life. We decided then to make this treatment better known and better accessible, with a focus on our home country, India. The aim of Vitalis Phage Therapy is to make phage therapy accessible as a treatment option to every person suffering from an antibiotic resistant infection or chronic infection. Our activities include phage therapy awareness initiatives, establishing local treatment frameworks in India to enable people’s access to phage therapy without travelling to another country, establishing diagnostic testing with phages in India to provide quicker access to the phage therapy, and working with medical institutions to facilitate phage therapy for their patients.
Combined effect of bacteriophage treatment and chemical disinfection on surface-associated Pseudomonas aeruginosa
In order for phages to be used as agents of environmental control of pathogens, it is necessary to understand how they may interact with other chemical disinfectants that may be used. In this study, biofilms of Pseudomonas aeruginosa were treated with combinations of a phage (P1 or JG4) and disinfectant (sodium hypochlorite) under wet conditions. Overall, it was found that phages were able to disrupt the biofilm and lead to additive synergistic effects when followed by chemical disinfection.
Thanks for coming! Elyse's talk was super interesting and we had around 50 attendees! You can find a recap here: https://phage.directory/capsid/phaves-recap-july-2020
Speakers
PhD, postdoctoral fellow at Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) in Zurich, Switzerland
Virtual phage series kick-off party: Welcome to PHAVES!
For the kick-off event, Jessica Sacher and Jan Zheng (of Phage Directory) will introduce the virtual series and Phage Directory's projects for 2020, and we'll then grab coffee and/or beer, catch up with everyone, and meet some new faces!
Speakers
Co-founder of Phage Directory
Co-founder of Phage Directory
Event recordings
Provided speakers give their consent, events will be recorded and shared here after the fact. (Speakers, let us know anytime if this will be an issue for you).
Event summaries
Event summaries will be written up and published in Capsid & Tail, our weekly newsletter. Sign up to receive it here: https://phage.directory/capsid
Nominate a speaker, topic or format!
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
Or email us at: [email protected]
Sign up to present!
If you're interested in presenting your research or your company's progress, please sign up below. We'll get in touch to chat about the best format, length, and specifics. We'll be accepting applications on a rolling basis throughout the summer.
Sign Up to Present
Our seminar schedule is filling up fast! If you're interested in giving a phage talk (they're usually around 15 minutes) to a small audience of phage enthusiasts, sign up below!
Interested in sponsoring an event?
Email us at [email protected] and we'll get in touch with details.
Organizers
Co-founder of Phage Directory
PHAVES Project Coordinator
Co-founder of Phage Directory