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| Special Features Phage Therapy in the News
In its heyday in the 1970s and 80s, nearly 800 people worked in the Industrial Branch of the Eliava Institute, using enormous vats, pill stampers and automatic bottling machines to pump out tons of phage products for military and civilian uses all over the Soviet Union. Another 200 worked to analyze hundreds of thousands of bacterial samples that continuously poured in at the direction of the Soviet Ministry of Health, testing the phage cocktails for efficacy and constantly isolating new phage and making refinements. They also fought infectious disease in other ways - vaccines, immune enhancers, probiotic bacterial cultures - but phage were their main focus. By then, Institutes and factories in places like Gorki and Ufa were also producing these phage products for Soviet use, but Tbilisi phage were especially prized as far away as Lithuania even in 1990. Guram Gvasalia, chief surgeon at the enormous State Hospital, has relied heavily on their phage preparations against purulent bacteria like Staphylococcus, Streptococcus and Pseudomonas to prevent and treat severe infections for over 25 years. The complex "pyophage" mixtures he uses contain over 30 phages against 5 key bacteria, and are continually refined by his collaborators at the Bacteriophage Institute to control any bacterial strains currently prevalent in the hospital. They are particularly important for such challenging cases as bone infections (osteomyelitis), diabetic foot ulcers and bed sores, where lack of circulation as well as bacterial resistance block antibiotic treatment. Contact Information For Phage Researchers at The Eliava Institute
Eliava Phage Production Renaissance Foundation The Project: To develop a central in-house therapeutic phage research production center, to replace the production by hand in individual labs that has been the only option for supplying local hospitals, clinics and pharmacies since 1993 when the Institute's Production Facility was summarily privatized after dissolution of the USSR.
Donations can be made through the Evergreen Foundation or we can provide you with the detailed instructions for depositing funds directly into their account in Tbilisi. Explanation: The Eliava Institute very badly needs a small central in-house facility for producing research and local-use quantities of therapeutic phage preparations. Since privatization of the large Industrial Arm of the Institute in 1993, such production has gone on within individual Institute laboratories, and the resulting bit of income from local hospitals, pharmacies and the military has helped many in those labs survive as well as providing a crucial service. However, it is very labor-intensive and inefficient, and quality control is more difficult than in a dedicated facility. A space was allocated 5 years ago in an unused wing of the Institute for that purpose, but no money was available from either the Academy of Sciences or the Institute. Now, the leaders of 7 Institute labs have set up this nonprofit Georgian foundation to raise money and implement this project. Some has already been received and the renovation is starting; it should be ready by the end of the year. The PhageBiotics Foundation has committed itself to helping them raise the needed money. The phage produced by the Eliava labs play a key role in medical practice in Tbilisi and in current research efforts to formally document the efficacy of the phages they believe in so strongly. The leader in those efforts is Dr. Guram Gvasalia, chief surgeon at the enormous State Hospital, who has relied heavily on the Institute's phage preparations against purulent bacteria like Staphylococcus, Streptococcus and Pseudomonas to prevent and treat severe infections for over 25 years. The complex "pyophage" mixtures most commonly used contain over 30 phages against 5 key bacteria, and are still continually refined by collaborators at the Bacteriophage Institute to control any bacterial strains currently prevalent in the hospital. They are particularly important for such challenging cases as bone infections (osteomyelitis), diabetic foot ulcers and bed sores, where lack of circulation as well as bacterial resistance block antibiotic treatment. Similarly, physicians at the national Burn Hospital, the Children's Hospital, Genesis Clinic and many other Tbilisi medical facilities rely very heavily on the high quality, appropriately tailored phage products they receive from the Institute and work closely with the scientists there. The new facility is putting together an advisory council of these collaborators and others in Tbilisi who play key roles in making health care available. International Grants involving Phage and the Eliava Institute
These programs were set up to help scientists once supported by the Soviet military make a productive transition to the civilian sector; they are associated with the State Department and also involve Europe and Japan. They have become very supportive of phage work - 2 State Department representatives actually came to the last Evergreen Phage meeting to encourage involvement in their programs. Projects under way
*Approved; still negotiating final research plan (This step often takes over a year)
**Waiting for granting board decisions
Scientists from the Eliava Institute are also collaborators on other international grants where the PIs are from other Georgian institutions; CR: Eliava Institute lead collaborator
For more information contact Dr. Elizabeth Kutter at phagebiotics@attbi.com. |
Bacteriophage |
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Last Updated: May 29, 2008 All content and images on this site are copyrighted by The Evergreen State College. |
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