Phage Biology

The Project: to support young Georgian graduate students for training at the Eliava Institute in the art and science of preparing therapeutic phages and applying modern techniques to their characterization and implementation.
Goal: to support at least 5 new students each year, for a total of 10; we have eager requests from several additional labs. Needs to meet this goal: $25,000 for this year.

Explanation: The Eliava Institute is rich with people with 40 years or more of experience working with the isolation, characterization and application of therapeutic phages. Several are still active there who learned their skills from scientists who worked with Eliava and d'Herelle in the 1930's. However, the serious financial state of Georgia and the Institute for the last 10 years long meant that virtually no one new could be added or trained, and most of the younger workers actually left the Institute for financial reasons. The danger of loosing the wealth of knowledge and skills was as serious as was the danger resulting from frequent power outages of loosing the phage and bacterial collections.

Four years ago, the PhageBiotics Foundation proposed to support a two-year training program for students at the Institute, and our proposal was approved by the Institute Director and Council and by the Georgian Academy of Sciences. We supply $2000 per year per student. Part goes to the student, part pays for lab supplies, part slightly supplements the meager $30-$60 a month that their mentor is paid from the Academy of Sciences, and 10 % goes as indirect costs to the Institute. In addition, the students have a twice-weekly English class in which they discuss relevant scientific papers and they share their work in annual presentations at the Institute.

Nine students and six Institute labs have participated in the program so far and two more students will be starting this fall; the four who have finished are now employed in the field. The benefits have gone beyond just the training; it is clear that the students are serving as bridges between the various labs and as sources of hope for the future. The capstone for two of our students was the opportunity to participate in the Evergreen Phage Biology meeting last summer. We also helped bring 2 students now supported through a CRDF Student Project grant to Nina Chanishvili; these two have also joined our students' English classes. This fall, we are adding a weekly program of training in molecular techniques for all of the students, with help from the Institute's Lab of Molecular Biology, and we hope to put on a 3-week basic phage and molecular biology program next fall for applicants from the University and Veterinary and Medical schools. Henry Krisch has offered to invite the top student from our next new Eliava Student group to spend a period of time in Toulouse, France as an added incentive to draw top-notch applicants into the field.

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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.

Phase I. Renovation of the vacant space allocated by the Institute for such a Center and installation here of current production resources from all labs, with some additional equipment. Total needed: $20,000.

Phase II. Re-establishment of an in-house animal facility in a portion of this space to again allow animal testing of both safety and efficacy of preparations, including making possible the re-introduction of very highly purified injectable versions of certain phages. Total needed: $8,000

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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 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.

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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 complex 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 phages, making refinements and making specialized products for local needs. They also fought infectious disease in other ways - with 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 broad Soviet use, but the Tbilisi phage cocktails were especially prized as far away as Lithuania even in 1990 and many of the phages used in cocktails produced elsewhere had been selected for efficacy in Tbilisi.

Their major markets were the military and other settings, such as large hospitals, where many people were dealing with the same bacteria. The equipment was massive; 100,000 tablets could be pressed in an hour, for example. The international markets were cut off and the factory portion was rapidly privatized under government orders in the early 1990's, with virtually no money received for it by the Institute and little indication of how money was made. The old factory facilities have been primarily taken over by a start-up pharmaceutical company, Biopharm, discussed under "companies". It primarily makes vitamins and various other biomedical and nutritional materials, but also sells a limited amount of phage liquid and capsules through Tbilisi pharmacies, primarily using the strains it was using at the time of privatization. Liquid and salve preparations of Eliava Institute phages are also available over-the-counter in these pharmacies.

Eliva Institute Infrastructure Support

The Need: Little money is available for utilities, library maintenance and other such resources at the Institute. There will be indirect cost payments associated with the various International grants, but they are set up, unbelievably, so that none of the indirect cost money is available until the grant work has been completed - generally 3 years later! Power and water have been a particularly serious problem, since the Institute not only has had to deal with current bills but is being faced with the new American-run power company's push throughout Tbilisi to collect on old bills, including those from government agencies. Even after extensive negotiation, they were left with over $20,000 to pay for electricity and power has been shut off at times as a result. Those individual labs that have grants now have their own metering boxes and pay for electricity directly and a couple of US agencies and Phagebiotics all have made contributions, but help is still needed.

Support for students at Evergreen to do phage-related work and for translation of articles in Russian. Donations for these purposes are handled through a separate Evergreen Phage Biotics account at the Evergreen foundation, rather than commingling funds with money for the PhageBiotics Fund.

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Contact the Site Manager

Last Updated: May 29, 2008

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