Dr. Alexander “Sandro” Sulakvelidze, Ph.D., is an Executive Vice-President and Chief Scientific Officer of Intralytix, Inc. Dr. Sulakvelidze is an internationally recognized expert in phage technology and infectious disease epidemiology. He has served/is serving as the Principal Investigator/Project Director of several grants and contracts from various agencies and foundations. He has published extensively on the subjects of phage biocontrol and phage therapy, and he is the author of several issued and pending patents in the field of bacteriophages (including two issued US patents on using bacteriophages for modulating human and animal microbiomes). He also co-edited a major book about bacteriophages, which was published by the CRC Press. Dr. Sulakvelidze’s research has been featured in several magazines and newspapers and in various radio programs and television documentaries. He serves as an ad hoc reviewer for various scientific journals and for several funding agencies in the United States.
During Phage Therapy & Antibiotic Resistance 2018, Dr. Sulakvelidze will give a presentation about Phage-based antimicrobials: novel approaches for managing drug-resistant bacteria. According to him: “Lytic bacteriophages have remarkable bactericidal potency against their specific bacterial host strains. The mechanisms by which phages kill bacteria, and the mechanisms of bacterial resistance to phages, are different from those for antibiotics. Therefore, bacteriophage-based therapeutic approaches may offer an attractive complementing modality for preventing and treating diseases caused by multi-antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
The presentation will discuss:
- current perspective about the history of bacteriophage therapy research
- key differences between antibiotic and phage therapies and how one approach can complement another
- the crucial regulatory and human safety issues concerning the use of bacteriophages in various applications ranging from food safety (“phage biocontrol”) to dietary supplements / probiotics (“phagebiotics”) to therapeutic applications (“phage therapy”)