Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show Dr. Jessica Sacher, Ph.D. - Co-Founder, Phage Directory / Staff Scientist, Stanford University School of Medicine - Unlocking The Potential Of Phage Therapy
Dr. Jessica Sacher, Ph.D. is Co-Founder of Phage Directory ( https://phage.directory/ ), a global network of phage researchers from more than 80 countries, where she directs its phage-sourcing and community-building efforts, including coordinating over 50 phage-finding efforts, where a network of more than 1,300 members of the global phage community volunteer their time and lab space to identify active phages for patients.
Dr. Sacher is also a Staff Scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine ( https://profiles.stanford.edu/jessica-sacher ) in Dr. Paul Bollyky's lab where she leads strategy & lays groundwork for a new phage-based therapeutic development and delivery center at Stanford, developing manufacturing processes and quality control pipelines for clinical-grade phage biologics, as well as evaluating phages as gene and peptide delivery vectors for eukaryotic and microbial cells.
Dr. Sacher was previously a member of Prof. Jon Iredell’s group in Sydney, Australia as a postdoctoral research scientist for the Phage Australia project where she developed and streamlined Phage Australia’s phage selection, biobanking, and manufacturing process, to make phage therapy available for patients Australia-wide and eventually beyond.
Dr. Sacher received her PhD in Microbiology and Biotechnology in 2018 from the University of Alberta, Canada.
Dr. Sacher is also Founder, Editor, Writer of Capsid & Tail: the phage community newsletter, a weekly report on bacteriophage news and research
Important Episode Links -
Bacteriophage therapy for multidrug-resistant infections: current technologies and therapeutic approaches - Published March 3, 2025 - The Journal of Clinical Investigation -
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/187996
The Citizen Phage Library (https://citizenphage.com)
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