Chip Schooley & Graham Hatfull: the state of phage therapy (& what HIV can teach us)

Chip Schooley (UC San Diego, IPATH) and Graham Hatfull (University of Pittsburgh) join us to discuss why phage therapy needs biologists and clinicians collaborating — and what the HIV field’s playbook can teach us.Topics covered:• Why they organized an academic phage conference in Washington, D.C.• The state of in vitro phage assays and the reproducibility problem• How to design phage clinical trials that actually teach us something• Phage resistance, fitness trade-offs, and the role of the immune system• What HIV’s journey from 1988 to 1998 tells us about where phage therapy is headed• Why synthetic biology is the future of phage therapeutics• The need for young scientists entering the fieldGuests:Chip Schooley — Co-founder, IPATH Phage Therapy Center, UC San Diego. Physician behind the Tom Patterson case. HIV research veteran.Graham Hatfull — University of Pittsburgh. Runs the world’s largest phage collection. Creator of SEA-PHAGES.Hosts:Jessica Sacher & Joe CampbellLinks:IAS-USA: The conference Chip & Graham describe in the episode was sponsored by the International Antiviral Society-USA (Executive Director: Donna Jacobsen): https://www.iasusa.org/