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Revision as of 23:32, 17 October 2018

Phactory

Phactory
Manufacturing Bacteriophages for Precision Medicine
Pathogenic Bacteria Turn Drug-Resistant at an Alarming Rate
By 2050, we project 10 million deaths per year caused by bacterial infections

UK Government (2015)
New superbug breaks through last line of antibiotic defense

Nature Microbiology (2018)
An alternative should be quality-assured, safe and effective

WHO (2015)

Phages Are the Natural Enemies of Bacteria
meetUp

Phages are capable of specifically and reliably infecting and killing bacteria but are harmless to human cells. They can therefore be administered to patients to cure bacterial infections. This process is called:

Phage Therapy

but...
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...cultivate giant flasks of pathogenic bacteria in order to isolate therapeutic bacteriophages from that.

Traditional Method

hazardous
impure
host restricted

How does Phactory work?
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Diagnosis

Next generation diagnostic systems like SHERLOCK can identify pathogens with high precision and accuracy. This enables rapid identification of an individualized therapeutic strategy even in the case of multiresistant superbugs. Using Phactory, we overcome the last remaining obstacles for an efficient bacteriophage therapy.


Phage Library Selection

By using a cell-free production system, we utilize one of the most revolutionary concepts of synthetic biology to produce therapeutic bacteriophages. Based on a personalized diagnosis, bacteriophage DNA is chosen from a library and is subjected to extensive quality assessment procedures to ensure a safe and effective application.

homogeneous

Because our raw material is DNA, phage therapy based on well-defined phages is no longer a fantasy.

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software-aided

State of the art DNA sequencing tools are combined with bioinformatics to precisely determine the amount of contaminants in a sample.

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high quality

The phage genome DNA is produced using extensive purification protocols, resulting in high quality raw materials with minimal contamination.

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Synthetic Phage Manufacturing

Production of our bacteriophages in a cell-free system ensures a fast and dependable application. Furthermore, working in a cell-free environment enables host independent production of phages in only 2.5% of the traditional production volume while demanding no biosafety regulations.

affordable

Below $10 per treatment, Phactory has a very competitive market value.

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scalable

Manufacturing in Phactory can be scaled up for mass production.

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modular

Phactory is an open system. This allows for the incorporation of modified proteins while leaving the genome unmodified, thereby achieving modularity without genetic modifications.

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safe

Host independence eliminates the need to cultivate pathogens to produce bacteriophages.


Quality Control

Extensive quality controls are employed to make sure that the produced bacteriophages are pure and effective. Potential complications due to toxins and contaminants are eliminated.

pure

Purity is essential for any therapeutic application. We use next-generation sequencing to ensure the absence of any contaminating DNA in the manufacturing process.

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toxin-free

Phactory assembles phages outside of living cells and is therefore free of most biological contaminants. We engineered it to reduce immunogenicity in humans by five orders of magnitude.

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GMO-free

The phages assembled by Phactory are purified to remove any genetically modified material before ever leaving a controlled lab environment.

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Packaging

Bacteriophage therapy covers a broad range of potential applications. We engineered custom hardware to package bacteriophages for oral treatment. Our packaging procedure is the last step of a personalized on-site treatment process.

long shelf-life

Phactory and phages are fragile components. We combined various techniques to enable phage assembly outside of a lab.

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portable

We demonstrated lyophilization of Phactory components in order to enable long range transport.

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on-site

Producing phages in Phactory is so easy that it allows any doctor to apply phage therapy on-site.


Therapy

Our bacteriophages are now ready for therapy. Phactory is fast and reliable enough to be an oral bedside application.

cooperation

We were able to produce genetically modified phages we received from the iGEM Team in Grenoble.

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integrated human practice

We reached out to local doctors to demonstrate just how easy bacteriophage therapy using Phactory is and to gain valuable input for our project.

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ready

In cooperation with phage therapy pioneers in Belgium, we safely produced functional phages against EHEC – a severe intestinal infection.

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Human Practices

To get an overview of how serious bacterial resistance really is, we visited the university hospital Rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich to meet Dr. Friedemann Gebhardt, the head of the hygiene department. Following his suggestions, we integrated Storage Protocols into Phactory.

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Entrepreneurship

We set a timeline, which experiments will be done by us in the future. Taking the disruptive potential of Phactory in to account, we evaluated the penetrable Market of Phactory. Parts of our project are patent-pending.

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Sequ-Into

Our Application combines powerful bioinformatic algorythms with third generation sequencing techniques allowing us to reach DNA purity levels of up to 96%.

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European Meetup

Munich 2018

One of the largest iGEM Events in Europe
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37
Teams
244
Participants
9
International speakers
11
Workshops