We Are Looking for Partners to Build a GMP Phage Facility in Africa

By emmannaemeka @ 2025-08-17T04:02 (+10)

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing global health crisis. Drug-resistant infections already kill over a million people each year and threaten food security by devastating aquaculture.

Phage therapy offers a powerful alternative, but  there are only a few GMP-grade phage facilities worldwide, almost all outside Africa. This leaves the regions most affected by AMR without access to safe, scalable treatments.

At the Center for Phage Biology and Therapeutics, Jos (Nigeria), we are developing phage-based solutions for human health and aquaculture. What we urgently need is a GMP-grade facility to produce and deliver phages safely at scale. This is the missing link between our lab discoveries and real-world impact.

We also urgently need reliable electricity infrastructure to power such a facility.


This work is:

 If you know partners, funders, or networks who could help us make this possible, we would be grateful for introduction or support. Kindly reach us via email at eennadi@plasu.edu.ng

Larks @ 2025-08-17T16:31 (+3)

Thanks for sharing, this sounds very interesting.

Are the products hard to transport? It makes sense there would be a lot of need in Africa, but I am wondering why the production has to be local.

emmannaemeka @ 2025-08-17T20:37 (+1)

Thank you for this thoughtful question.

Phages themselves are relatively stable compared to many biologics, but transporting them internationally for clinical or aquaculture use raises serious hurdles:

  1. Regulatory and safety barriers: Importing GMP phages from Europe or North America into Africa is a lengthy, uncertain process, and in many cases, they may not be permitted for direct therapeutic use. These have not been explored, but I can imagine how difficult it will be to get phage therapy across borders.
  2. Customization to local pathogens: Phages are highly strain-specific. Local production allows us to isolate, adapt, and manufacture phages that actually match the pathogens circulating in our hospitals and farms.
  3. Cost and logistics: Even if imports were possible, shipping live phage preparations under controlled conditions is expensive and delays treatment. In aquaculture, farmers need solutions within days, not months.
  4. Sustainability and equity: Relying entirely on foreign production deepens Africa’s dependency on external suppliers. A local GMP facility builds capacity, jobs, and resilience within the region most affected by AMR.

So while global transport of phages is feasible, without local GMP capacity, Africa will remain locked out of real-world therapeutic use, which is why this facility is the critical missing link.

LT🔸 @ 2025-08-17T14:25 (+1)

What have you identified as the relevant constraints on the scaling of phage therapies to more clinical settings? I'm not an expert, but I've worked on phage biology as a student researcher, and my impression is that the bottleneck on progress for phage therapies isn't available GMP manufacturing facilities but rather the technical ability to do the necessary tailoring of phage therapies to specific infections at scale and the availability of strong RCT evidence that--with available scalable technologies--we can actually do that. 

Since you're more involved in this field, I realize you may have more current or deep knowledge of the topic, and if you have the capacity, I'd appreciate to hear your perspective on the most relevant bottlenecks on progress in phage therapeutics. 

emmannaemeka @ 2025-08-17T21:02 (+1)

Thank you for this excellent point. You’re right that scaling phage therapy faces several intertwined bottlenecks. From my perspective, the most pressing constraints can be grouped into three areas:

  1. Manufacturing & Infrastructure
    GMP-grade production is fundamental for moving from research to clinical trials or therapeutic deployment. For any phage to be used in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), it must meet basic characteristics such as identity, purity, stability, and full genomic sequencing to exclude toxin or resistance genes. These requirements can only be assured under GMP standards. Without such a facility, even well-tailored phages cannot legally or safely progress into clinical testing. At present, GMP phage facilities are very few and concentrated in Europe and North America. For Africa, this gap is particularly severe, as it prevents us from even generating the material basis for rigorous clinical work.
  2. Tailoring & Clinical Validation
    You’re also absolutely right that robust pipelines for rapidly identifying, screening, and matching phages to infections are essential. Here at the Centre, we already have the technical ability and skilled personnel to isolate, characterize, and test phages against resistant pathogens, both for human and aquaculture use. Advances in genomics and automation are helping globally, but these technologies still need scaling. A further barrier is the very high cost of conducting proper randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which are essential for regulatory acceptance but well beyond our current resources. We also lack connections to funders who are willing to support such large-scale trials in Africa, which is why we are actively seeking partnerships of any kind, from technical collaborations to funding and network-building.
  3. Ecosystem & Accessibility
    Even if manufacturing and clinical validation hurdles are solved, many regions, including much of Africa- lack reliable electricity, cold-chain logistics, and policy frameworks to support routine phage therapy. These systemic barriers mean that innovation doesn’t always translate into patient benefit.

So in short, manufacturing capacity is not the only bottleneck, but in regions like ours, it is the first missing link. We have the scientific skills and technical know-how in place, but without a GMP-grade facility, including sequencing capabilities and reliable supporting infrastructure, those capacities cannot be translated into safe, scalable therapies. And even when such a facility exists, RCTs remain prohibitively expensive without external support. That is why we are actively looking for partnerships to help bridge these gaps and move phage therapy forward where it is needed most.