Phage therapy and the Eliava Institute
Terapia con bacteriófagos y el Instituto Eliava
- Date
- 1923 · confidence high
- Place
- Tbilisi, Georgia
- Credited to
- Giorgi Eliava, in collaboration with Félix d'Hérelle
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
An institute founded in 1923 by the Georgian microbiologist Giorgi Eliava to produce bacteriophages and use them against infections such as dysentery and cholera. From 1933 he worked with Félix d'Hérelle, whose phage work was in part developed there.
D'Hérelle had already used phages therapeutically in Paris (1919); the Eliava Institute's merit is its continuity and institutional scale, not the first application.
What it led to
- the Soviet and Georgian tradition of phage therapy, still in use
- a phage bank with thousands of strains now studied against resistant bacteria
- Eliava's execution in 1937 during the Stalinist purges