Phage therapy for compassionate use

What is compassionate use of Phage therapy?

When antibiotics prove unsuccessful in treating chronic bacterial infections and a patient is critically ill, they may be considered eligible for "compassionate use" of phage therapy. Compassionate use treatments are novel treatments not widely available to everyone, but have potential to become more widely used treatments in the future. Phage Therapy has been used internationally in this way, and Phage Australia have developed a protocol for the compassionate use of phage therapy here in Australia.

This protocol received national ethics approval in December 2021 and has been accepted by numerous hospitals Australia-wide.

How is eligibility for compassionate use determined?

Eligibility for compassionate use phage therapy is assessed by the treating doctor. If they believe that the patient has an infection that might be treatable by phage therapy, they will discuss this with other independent senior doctors on the hospital’s committee. The patient’s medical history, other treatment options and suitability for phage therapy will all be considered.

If the patient is deemed to be a suitable candidate for phage therapy, doctors obtain a small sample of the bacteria causing the infection and have it tested in the laboratory to determine if there are any phages available that target it.

If phages are identified, the doctors will let the patient know and ask if they would like to receive phage therapy. A number of regulatory approvals will then need to be obtained to allow for treatment of the patient, but these are processed as high priority because the patient is typcially very ill. Once approval is granted the laboratory will be able to scale up production of this phage so that there will be enough of it to treat the bacterial infection. The phage preparation is then cleaned so that it is suitable to be administered to humans.