Gladstone Institutes has received a USD 2 million NIAID P01 award to establish the PhAIge Therapy Center, a multi-project preclinical program applying AI-guided engineering and molecular typing to accelerate phage therapy development against multidrug-resistant ESKAPE pathogens, with an initial focus on Klebsiella pneumoniae.
The five-year grant, running through April 2031, funds two research projects and three supporting cores under principal investigator Seth Lawler Shipman. The first project develops high-throughput, sequencing-based assays to quantify rate constants across each stage of the phage infection cycle — recognition, entry, replication, packaging, and lysis — generating the granular kinetic data needed to rationally select and engineer phages with superior bactericidal activity. The second project uses multiplexed assays to rapidly characterize K. pneumoniae strains by capsule type and susceptibility profile, enabling construction of optimized, off-the-shelf phage cocktails matched to individual clinical isolates.
Two specialized cores anchor the translational infrastructure. An Advanced Computational Core integrates bioinformatics pipelines, machine learning, and AI-driven modeling to predict phage-host interactions and guide candidate selection. An Organoid and Human Cell Culture Core incorporates 3D human tissue models and primary cell cultures into early screening, capturing host-pathogen dynamics that standard in vitro assays do not reflect. The program also includes an Administrative Core that manages a development and research pilot program and coordinates with clinical and industry advisors.
The P01 mechanism, typically reserved for multi-investigator center-scale efforts, reflects the scope of infrastructure the Gladstone team is assembling. The combination of quantitative infection-cycle assays, AI-guided phage selection, and human-relevant tissue models represents an attempt to address a persistent bottleneck in phage therapy development: the absence of standardized, predictive preclinical tools that can reliably translate to clinical outcomes.