Research

Our research will focus on two key challenge areas in managing lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis.

Advancing phage therapy

Our research teams in Liverpool will develop phage therapy, which could offer a new treatment strategy for people who have few options left to control their lung infections. Phage therapy uses natural viruses called bacteriophage, or ‘phage’, to target bacteria instead of antibiotics, and could help prevent antimicrobial resistance. 

We will develop new combinations of phage, test the best way of giving them, and ensure the UK can produce phage at medical standards.

Learn more about phage therapy - what phages are, how they work, and their potential to treat antibiotic-resistant infections.

Improving treatment for exacerbations 

We will use cutting edge technology to find the causes of exacerbations and test how to best use existing treatments by:

• Developing a new way of testing lots of antibiotic combinations at the same time to know in advance which might work best for each person
• Using Artificial Intelligence methods to scan medical records and help predict future treatment responses, including antibiotic resistance
• Investigating whether a new test which rapidly tests for over 20 bugs at the same time, can tell us which treatment is best.

Together, these approaches will help develop new ways for doctors to choose the most effective treatments, which can then be tested in future clinical trials.