Israeli phage pioneers join €15 million trial against drug-resistant urinary infections
Hadassah and Hebrew University researchers join P-PEAKS UTI, a 13-country study testing personalised bacteria-killing viruses for women with recurrent E. coli infections.
Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Hadassah Medical Organization are partners in one of the largest clinical trials yet of phage therapy, the use of viruses that infect and kill bacteria, as an alternative to antibiotics. The project, funded by a €15 million (about $17 million) European Union grant, was announced at the end of July 2026.
Called P-PEAKS UTI, the study unites 20 research and clinical partners in 13 countries and is led by Dr. Gregory German of St. Joseph's Health Centre in Canada. It will enrol about 220 women who suffer from chronic, recurrent urinary tract infections caused by Escherichia coli, at clinical sites in Israel, the United States, Canada, France, the UK, Italy, Spain and Estonia. Each participant will receive a single intravenous dose of antibiotics together with either a phage treatment matched to her own bacteria or a placebo, so that the benefit can be measured rigorously.
Urinary tract infections that keep coming back affect millions of women and are getting harder to treat as bacteria become resistant to antibiotics; many patients go through round after round of drugs without lasting relief. Phages are found naturally wherever bacteria live. Each type attacks only particular bacterial strains and leaves human cells alone, so a well-chosen phage can target an infection precisely without wiping out helpful microbes or adding to resistance.
The Israeli team is led by Prof. Ronen Hazan and Dr. Sahar Melamed of the Hebrew University and Prof. Ran Nir-Paz of Hadassah. Hazan and Nir-Paz founded and co-lead the Israeli Phage Therapy Center, which has collected phages and treated patients with otherwise untreatable infections on a compassionate basis. They said international collaborations of this kind make it possible to test new therapies for patients who currently have few options. The researchers hope that strong trial results will help move phage therapy into routine practice for other resistant infections too.
“International collaborations such as P-PEAKS allow us to combine expertise across disciplines and countries to evaluate innovative therapies.”
Antimicrobial resistance already causes more than a million deaths a year and threatens to undo much of modern medicine. A large controlled trial is the step needed to show whether personalised phage therapy can become a standard weapon against resistant bacteria.
Sources
- Major clinical trial aims to transform the prevention of recurrent urinary tract infectionsNews-Medical, July 28, 2026
- Hadassah Medical Organization, Hebrew University Part of $17 Million Global Phage Trial for Drug-Resistant Urinary Tract InfectionsHadassah, August 4, 2026
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