A Device for Phage Capture and Release

Objective

Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically infect bacteria and offer powerful solutions for combating antibiotic resistance, advancing industrial biotechnology, and enabling fundamental research. Major challenges hinder the broader use of phages in therapy and biotechnology. Identifying suitable phages and assembling complementary cocktails remains slow, labor-intensive, and largely unsystematic. Purification is equally problematic, as production in bacterial hosts introduces endotoxins, DNA, and other contaminants that are difficult to remove with current methods, which are inefficient, slow, and not scalable. Together, these obstacles represent critical bottlenecks and highlight the urgent need for reliable, rapid, and safe phage capture technologies. The PhageTRAP project aims to establish the proof of concept for a modular platform that can selectively capture and release phages using synthetic motifs tethered to a solid support. Different motifs will target Gram-positive pathogens, while other motifs will serve as examples for the customizable capture of Gram-negative pathogens. The platform will be validated with species clinically relevant for phage therapy and tested on phages recovered from environmental sources. By combining synthetic chemistry and microbiology, this proof-of-concept project will demonstrate a highly innovative, scalable, and safe approach to phage capture, enabling high-throughput screening, assembly of complementary phage cocktails, and production of therapeutic-grade preparations. The resulting platform has strong translational potential, clear industrial and clinical applications, and opportunities for commercialization and intellectual property development. Ultimately, PhageTRAP could become a disruptive technology for advancing phage-based therapeutics, transforming them into faster, safer, and more reliable tools for medicine and biotechnology.