Phage therapy for difficult-to-treat infections in children
June 30 at 4PM Pacific // July 1 at 9am Sydney time
I will be discussing the well-recognised advantages of phage therapy from a clinician’s perspective, as well as the challenges associated with mainstream application and possible solutions to expedite this. I will also discuss the opportunities that exists for phage therapy research from a paediatrician’s perspective, developing on progress to date in this field. I will highlight outstanding research questions that have an impact on clinical application of phage therapy and implementation issues at the bedside. I will then present two cases of phage therapy use in children at our hospital, which exemplify these important considerations.
Ameneh Khatami
Senior lecturer in Child and Adolescent Health for The University of Sydney and paediatric infectious diseases physician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead
Ameneh Khatami is a senior lecturer in Child and Adolescent Health for The University of Sydney, based at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead where she also works as a paediatric infectious diseases physician. Her research focus is on novel therapeutic options for difficult to treat infections (including phage therapy) and optimisation of antimicrobial therapy for children with cystic fibrosis. She was the first clinician in Australia to treat a child with intravenous phage therapy in October 2019 for a highly resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa bone infection and has been overseeing the planning and treatment of other patients using phages against Mycobacterium abscessus(including the first use of a genetically modified phage in Australia) through collaborations with the Westmead Institute for Medical Research and The Sydney Children’s Hospital Network cystic fibrosis team. Ameneh is the paediatric representative for the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Network with a goal to increase involvement of children in clinical trials, particularly early phase studies.