We are pleased to announce that Dr. Oscar Mencía-Ares, Universidad de León, Spain, will join the Targeting Phage Therapy 2026 with a presentation entitled: Unraveling the Nasopharyngeal Phageome in Post-Weaning Piglets: Advances and Perspectives.

The post-weaning period is a critical stage for respiratory infections in piglets, yet the role of bacteriophages in shaping bacterial communities remains poorly understood.

Using metagenomic approaches across commercial farms, Dr. Mencia will present new insights into the porcine nasopharyngeal phageome and how phage host interactions may influence respiratory health, microbial balance, and future alternatives to antibiotics in livestock production.

This emerging field may help drive new phage-based strategies for sustainable animal health.

About his talk:

The porcine upper respiratory tract is a critical gateway for pathogen colonization during the post-weaning period, a window in which bacterial communities undergo profound reorganization and opportunistic colonizers of the porcine respiratory disease complex (PRDC) gain ground. While the bacterial side of this niche has received increasing attention over the last decade, its viral component, and particularly the bacteriophages that shape bacterial dynamics through lysis and lysogeny, has remained largely unexplored. This talk will introduce the nasopharyngeal phageome as a missing piece in our understanding of respiratory microbial ecology in swine, and will frame why building reference resources for this site is necessary.

Drawing on recent work combining complementary short-read metagenomic workflows across commercial farms, I will outline how methodological choices shape viral recovery in low-biomass respiratory samples, and how their integration enables the construction of curated phageome catalogues for respiratory sites in livestock. On top of this descriptive layer, I will discuss how replication strategy and host affiliation emerge as organizing axes of the community, pointing to an ecologically structured rather than random viral landscape in the nasopharynx.

Finally, the talk will turn toward perspective, discussing how this foundational resource opens the door to longitudinal and interventional studies of phage-mediated modulation during the post-weaning transition, and how a closer look at the interplay between bacterial defense systems and phage counter-defense strategies may help contextualize phage–host dynamics in this niche. Together, these directions lay the groundwork for informing future phage-based approaches within the broader framework of antimicrobial stewardship in pig production.

Targeting Phage Therapy 2026
June 9-10, 2026
 – Valencia, Spain

www.phagetherapy-site.com

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