Jessica Sacher - Podcast Details

Shows

PodovirusDr. Marisa Azad, MD, PhD: Behind Canada's first prosthetic joint treatment with phage therapy"It's unacceptable to just tell this poor patient, there's nothing I can do to help you... That's when I thought, okay, well, what about kind of pushing the boundaries a bit here and thinking about phage therapy?" - Dr. Marisa AzadJoin us for an inspiring conversation with Dr. Marisa Azad, a clinician-scientist at The Ottawa Hospital who is pioneering the treatment of chronic infections using phage therapy. Dr. Azad shares her journey from microbiology PhD to orthopedic infectious disease specialist, and how a desperate patient case led her to become the first in...2025-06-2748 min

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player AnalysisWhat did Google's AI Co-Scientist "Discover"? The Human Scientists' POV, from the Podovirus podcastWe're following up on our recent episode on Google's AI Co-Scientist with a special crossover episode from the Podovirus podcast. Hosts Dr Jessica Sacher and Dr Joe Campbell speak with José Penadés and Tiago Costa, scientists at Imperial College London who made a surprising discovery that Google's AI Co-Scientist later put forward as a hypothesis entirely on its own. The episode explores the fascinating world of bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) and phage-inducible chromosomal islands (PICIs) - DNA sequences that hijack virus reproduction to spread themselves as a bacterial defense mechanism. The key mystery was how ca...2025-06-051h 14

PodovirusHow to navigate regulatory limbo: a Canadian phage therapy CEO's playbook"Phages are not drugs. Every time they say, 'Did you go through regulatory?' I say, 'I can do regulatory, but I'm not a drug.' There's 145 components of the regulatory requirements that I don't fit in."When your health innovation doesn't fit existing regulatory boxes, how do you build a business? Steven Theriault, CEO of Cytophage, has spent 9 years learning to navigate Canada's regulatory maze for phage therapy. From being told "we don't know" by government officials to raising $24M and treating patients, Steven shares his hard-won playbook for building in uncharted regulatory...2025-06-0259 min

PodovirusWhy can't patients access phage therapy? Does FDA need to change, or do patients just need a voice?"This feels just like the early days of the HIV crisis. People are dying, you're not hearing about it. We need a group like ACT UP to bring this to the public. We're not going to get phage therapy until people start demanding we have it." On this episode, we talk to phage therapy patient advocate Chris Shaffer about how he fought for access to phage therapy to save his own life, and how it's led him to advocate on behalf of other patients being told there's "nothing left" for their infections. 2025-05-091h 12

PodovirusFinally, phase 2 data! Inside BiomX's successful phage therapy trial with CEO Jonathan Solomon"Finally, finally we have Phase 2 data. We put a dent in the theory that phage therapy doesn't work. Maybe it does work. Maybe it's worth taking a risk."Jonathan Solomon joins Jessica Sacher and Joe Campbell on the Podovirus Podcast to discuss BiomX's exciting Phase 2 clinical trial results, where they used bacteriophages to treat diabetic foot osteomyelitis (DFO). With 40% of DFO patients facing amputation, this is an area of massive unmet need. Jonathan shares how their trial was designed (he credits the team at Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, which began the trial prior to its...2025-05-0258 min

Data in BiotechHow Phage Therapy is Scaling to Meet Antibiotic Resistance with Jessica SacherPhage therapy is stepping into the spotlight as antibiotic resistance rises - and Jessica Sacher is helping lead the charge. In this episode, Ross Katz speaks with Jessica, Co-Founder of Phage Directory and Staff Scientist at Stanford, about sourcing phages, operationalizing therapy, and predicting efficacy through data. This conversation explores how personalized phage therapy works, its scalability, and the data challenges shaping its future. What You'll Learn in This Episode: Why phage therapy is a promising solution to antibiotic-resistant infectionsHow Phage Directory connects researchers and clinicians to accelerate treatmentWhat operational hurdles exist in scaling pers...2025-04-3059 min

PodovirusDoes every scientist need an AI co-scientist? How two professors solved a years-long viral mystery"I was so biased. I knew too much and that's why we couldn't see the obvious answer that was right in front of us for years."In this episode of the Podovirus Podcast, we explore the intersection of AI and phage biology with Professors José Penadés and Tiago Costa from Imperial College London. They share their recent discovery about phage-inducible chromosomal islands (PICIs) and how Google's new (not-yet-released) AI co-scientist tool independently reached the same conclusions they had spent years working toward—revealing how tailless phage capsids can bind with different phage tails to e...2025-04-091h 09

Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / ShowDr. Jessica Sacher, Ph.D. - Co-Founder, Phage Directory / Staff Scientist, Stanford University School of Medicine - Unlocking The Potential Of Phage TherapySend us a textDr. 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...2025-04-011h 11

PodovirusWhat's the business case for phage therapy?“Getting our foot through the door to any VC... As soon as they hear we're infectious disease, their eyes kind of get big. And then they hear we're antibacterial, their eyes get bigger. And then they hear we're not small molecule, it's like all the alarm bells are ringing.”In this episode, we sit down with Amanda Burkardt (CEO) and Mayukh Das (COO) of Phiogen Pharmaceuticals, a new entrant in the phage therapy space, to tackle one of the field's most pressing questions: can phage therapy succeed as a business where antibiotics have struggled? Draw...2025-02-2151 min

PodovirusHow to bring phages to market: Intralytix's food-to-pharma strategy"Somebody's father, friend, husband just passed away in the most developed country in the world... from a simple infection that probably could have been treated in Georgia." In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Alexander (Sandro) Sulakvelidze to explore his journey in growing a phage therapy company from scratch, from food to human therapy. Growing up in the Republic of Georgia, phage therapy was a normal thing for Sandro; when he came to the US and saw people dying of preventable infections, he founded Intralytix. This was 26 years ago. 2024-12-1959 min

PodovirusGina Suh, MD: What it's really like to treat patients with phage therapyWhat's it like to be a doctor treating patients with phage therapy in the US today? Dr. Gina Suh, Mayo Clinic infectious disease physician, tells us: - How she established phage therapy as an option for her patients at Mayo - How phages have helped her patients - What's been hardest - Where she's hopeful - Where things have gotten worse - What's next This episode, I'm joined by my phage friend Joe Campbell (former NIH program...2024-11-081h 12

PodovirusJesus Fernandez-Rodriguez: How Eligo Bioscience edits gut bacteria with phagesWelcome to the Podovirus podcast, episode 3! In this episode, I talk with Jesus Fernandez-Rodriguez from Eligo Bioscience, a Paris-based biotech company pioneering microbiome editing using modified bacteriophages. We talk about Eligo’s recent Nature publication, “In situ targeted base editing of bacteria in the mouse gut”, how it works, and what the team is thinking of doing with it. 💡 Takeaways: - Eligo Biosciences has developed a base editing technology using modified phages to precisely modify populations of E. coli and Klebsiella in the mouse gut microbiome without killing them. - Microbiome hype is not over yet! - Beyond us...2024-09-2057 min

PodovirusGetting phage research funded — Joe Campbell reflects on a career at NIAIDWelcome to the Podovirus podcast, episode 2! In this episode, Jessica talks with Dr. Joe Campbell, who recently retired as a program officer at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Joe played a key role in shaping phage research funding and policy during his tenure at NIAID. He reflects on his career, the evolution of phage therapy research, and shares insights into the grant application process. Takeaways - Phage therapy funding at NIAID has evolved over time; it used to be lumped in with antibiotics, but Joe and his...2024-08-0846 min

PodovirusWhy all phage researchers need to be in Australia this JulyThis is a very special week. We’re launching the first episode of our Podovirus podcast! We started this on a whim (I wanted to explore this format, since I love talking to phage people and I love podcasts; and Jan came up with a punny name we couldn't pass up). Ok, episode 1! I'll be honest — I stayed in science because of how much I love conferences. My phage phriendships are some of my favourites in life, and annual conferences have always pushed my science forward more than anything else. It was so much...2024-05-0336 min

The TechLink Health PodcastDefeating Superbugs 🦠 An Evolutionary Battle (Part 3)As many reflect on the past few years of the pandemic and continue thinking about emerging threats of the future, it’s important to bring awareness to that very topic, the future, and what’s on the horizon in public health. Today’s episode is Part 3 of a series that focuses on the emerging threat of antimicrobial resistance, which has been deemed by The World Health Organization as one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity. The episode digs deeper into innovations happening globally to help defeat superbugs and evolve the applications of Phage Therapy as well as dee...2023-11-0637 min

The Disobedient Scientist PodcastPhD to Entrepreneur with Jessica SacherDo you know that feeling when you talk to someone and they just light you up? They motivate you. They inspire you. They make you realize, even just for a moment, that you can do anything in the world. Today’s interview is that for me. Jessica Sacher is a microbiologist and founder of Phage Directory. She is a checkmark collector, horse lover, swing dancer, recovering people pleaser, secret rebel, and last but definitely not least, grad school entrepreneur. She was a woman in grad school, just hanging out with a friend, read a tweet about the science she st...2022-03-221h 17

The EMBO podcastThe enemy of my enemy22 October 2021 - Pediatric infectious disease physician Ameneh Khatami, senior author Jonathan Iredell and their collaborators recently published in EMBO Molecular Medicine the story of a seven-year-old girl infected with a multi-drug resistant Pseudomonas strain. The team resorted to an experimental treatment with a long history, phage therapy. In this episode of the EMBO podcast, Khatami told us the story of her young patient. We’ll also hear about a very sick sea turtle and discuss the challenges of interpreting single-patient studies. Note: We’d like to thank Dmitriy Myelnikov (University of Manchester) and Jessica Sacher (Phage Directory) for their...2021-10-2233 min

Joyful MicrobeUsing viruses to battle superbugs (phage therapy): Dr. Jessica SacherImagine the last time you were sick and needed antibiotics...now imagine that you took the antibiotic, but the infection didn’t go away. The antibiotic didn’t work. And then the next one didn’t. And then the next one, all the way until none of them worked.It happens. And although I’ve never personally experienced this, I’d think it would be terrifying.What would you do? Recently, some doctors have started using viruses called bacteriophages (or phages for short) that can kill bacteria. It’s called phage therapy, and it’s saving people’...2021-07-011h 07

Content&Coffee – Als Original sichtbar werdenWie du Klarheit für dein Business findest – mit Isabel SacherRäume auf und finde deine Vision, deine Mission und deinen Fokus! Du bist multipassioniert und hast unendlich viele Ideen? Du würdest am liebsten jeden Tag ein neues Business aus dem Boden stampfen, hast unendlich viel im Kopf und weißt einfach nicht, wo du anfangen sollst? Dann ist diese Podcastfolge genau das Richtige für dich. Isabel Sacher ist Business Coachella und inspiriert und begleitet Frauen in Gründung dabei, ihre Business Vision zu finden. Dabei spielen Themen wie Selbstvertrauen Loslassen Mindset-Arbeit eine große Rolle. In einer Welt voller...2021-04-2851 min

Big Fat Facts PodcastThe COVID Vaccine - What You Need to Know and WHY You Should Get it, with Dr. Jessica SacherSince the start of the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic, laboratories have been actively working on creating a vaccine for the virus. It has been over 10 months since the majority of the countries went into lockdown and now in January, we can start vaccinating the population. How does the Covid vaccine work and what will the mRNA/protein do when it reaches our system with the vaccine? There’s a lot of questions and let’s discuss everything in fine detail with Dr. Jessica Sacher.2021-01-1255 min