Phages and the Future of Global Health: An Overlooked Opportunity for High-Impact Investment

By Nnaemeka Emmanuel Nnadi @ 2025-08-29T09:08 (+14)

TL;DR

• Antibiotic resistance is on track to kill 10M people annually by 2050,  a crisis greater than cancer.
• Phages (bacteria-killing viruses) are a precise, proven tool against resistant infections, with a success rate of over 79% in last-resort cases.
• Beyond treatment, phages are powerful platforms for vaccines and immunotherapies, enabling rapid responses to pandemics and promoting global equity.
• The Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics (CENPBAT) LTD/LTG is pioneering African-led innovation in aquaculture, wound healing, phage isolation (45 MDR Pseudomonas phages), and a phage vaccine for typhoid,but faces severe funding constraints.
• Global North funders (NIH, EU, Wellcome, Gates, DARPA, CARB-X) have invested heavily, while Africa remains almost entirely unfunded, despite being hardest hit by AMR.
• Modest investment in Africa would have an outsized impact, advancing new therapies, building local capacity, and strengthening global preparedness.

The Looming Crisis: Why We Need Phages Now

We are entering the twilight of the antibiotic era. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria already kill approximately 1.27 million people annually (Murray et al., 2022, The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02724-0). Without intervention, this figure could reach 10 million deaths per year by 2050, surpassing cancer and costing the global economy up to $100 trillion (O’Neill Report, 2016).

The burden falls disproportionately on low-income countries, where health systems are weaker, antibiotics are less accessible, and resistant infections are more entrenched. Phages — viruses that specifically target and kill bacteria — offer a precision-guided solution. Unlike broad-spectrum antibiotics that wipe out healthy microbes alongside pathogens, phages act like “smart weapons,” sparing the microbiome while eliminating only the bacteria causing disease. This not only reduces side effects but preserves the gut ecosystem that underpins nutrition, immunity, and mental health.

Phage Therapy: A Proven Lifeline

While regulatory-approved large-scale clinical trials are still emerging, compassionate use cases have shown remarkable results:

• Life-Saving Example: In 2016, Tom Patterson, a UCSD professor, was dying from a multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii infection. After all antibiotics failed, doctors turned to a custom phage cocktail. He made a full recovery
• Success stories  Analysis of compassionate phage therapy cases found 79% of patients improved or achieved infection eradication after phage treatment These were patients resistant to every other therapy.

Supporting phage research is not speculative; it is about scaling a therapy that already works when nothing else does.

Phages for Pandemic Preparedness

Phages are not just therapies. They are platform technologies for pandemic response.

Phage Display Vaccines

• Speed: Phage display can prototype vaccines in days by selecting antigens from billions of variants
• Low-Cost Manufacturing: Phages grow in bacterial cultures, thereby avoiding the need for billion-dollar biomanufacturing plants.
• Global Equity: Many phages are stable at room temperature, enabling local vaccine production and distribution in LMICs.

Imagine if the next SARS-like virus emerges: a phage vaccine could be designed within a week of sequencing the pathogen, manufactured in-country, and distributed without cold chains. This is pandemic preparedness that truly scales globally.

What We Are Building: The Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics(CENPBAT) LTD/LTG

At the Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics, we are pioneering an African-led hub for phage innovation with projects spanning health, agriculture, and vaccines:

• Aquaculture: Developing phage solutions for catfish farming, where bacterial infections devastate livelihoods.
• Wound Healing: Testing Phages against Chronic and Infected  Wounds.
• Clinical Pipeline: Isolated 45 phages active against multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas.
• Vaccine Innovation: Building local expertise in phage vaccine platforms. Currently, we are designing a phage-based vaccine against Salmonella typhi (typhoid fever).

Our challenges are not scientific but financial. Few funders support phage research in Africa, and advancing candidates into clinical trials requires resources far beyond the capacity of local labs. With support, Africa could lead the next chapter in phage biology — but without it, critical innovations risk stalling at the bench.

Who Funds Phage Research Globally?

While funding for phages is growing, it is heavily concentrated in the Global North.

Phage Funding in Africa

• Extremely limited. Most African phage research is funded by small-scale university grants, agricultural ministries, or foreign collaborations.
• Notable exceptions include phage biocontrol in food safety (South Africa), environmental phage ecology studies (Kenya and Uganda), and small-scale aquaculture projects in Nigeria.
• There is no large-scale dedicated African funding mechanism for phages, despite Africa facing some of the highest AMR burdens.

This creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity: a relatively small investment in Africa could generate breakthroughs with global benefits.

The Case for Investment

Phages represent one of the highest-leverage opportunities in biomedicine today:

1. Massive Global Problem: AMR is existential for healthcare.
2. Proven Yet Underserved Solution: Phages have already proven effective in cases where antibiotics fail.
3. Platform Technology: Vaccines, immunotherapy, agriculture , and phages do more than antibiotics ever could.
4. Low Barriers, High Multipliers: Phage discovery requires modest labs, making it ideal for LMICs.
5. Equity & Preparedness: Phages are inexpensive, stable, and scalable, making them ideal for global access during outbreaks.

Supporting phages is not just about funding science; it is about future-proofing global health.

Conclusion

When antibiotics fail, and they increasingly do, the world will ask: What did we build next?

Phages are not a distant dream. They are already saving lives, powering next-gen vaccines, and showing potential in immunotherapy. Yet, the regions of the world most in need, particularly Africa, remain almost entirely unfunded.

The Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics is a testament to Africa's readiness to lead. But without investment, the science risks being left behind at the moment it is most urgently needed.

Phages are our best answer to the post-antibiotic era, but only if we act now.