[Phage therapy in Germany-Update 2025]

Phage therapy is a promising approach to combat the antibiotic resistance crisis worldwide and in Germany. However, after widespread use in Germany from the 1930s to the 1960s, the number of patients treated with phages each year dropped to under a hundred in the following decades. An overview of the current situation of phage therapy in Germany and the translational research supporting it is provided. Aspects taken into account here are phage production, phage banks, clinical phage application, and ongoing translational research projects in Germany.There is a lack of phages for clinical use. Phage therapy is only used in a limited number of patients in a few clinics as an individual treatment attempt. There are several phage banks that, due to different institutional backgrounds and guidelines, do not work in a comparable way and only exchange phage stocks in the context of scientific projects. Projects in basic and translational phage research have increased considerably in Germany. The most urgent change seems to be the expansion of phage production capacities.There is still no high-quality evidence on the clinical success of phage therapy in the medical field by means of randomized controlled clinical trials. In close consultation with the regulatory authorities, it seems sensible to urgently enable a few centers to treat patients according to the Belgian model.