Georgi Eliava Institute for Bacteriophages, Microbiology and Virology

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Front section of the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi

The Georgi Eliava Institute for Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology (English George Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology , IBMV) is an institute for research into bacteriophages in Tbilisi , Georgia . Since the 1930s, the institute has also been concerned with the therapeutic use of phage preparations.

1923 to 1937

The forerunner of the institute was a bacteriological laboratory, which was founded by the Georgian microbiologist Georgi Eliava in Tbilisi in 1923, known as the Institute of Microbiology . Eliava had returned to the now Soviet Georgia in 1921 from a research stay at the Pasteur Institute in Paris with laboratory equipment, vaccines and sera. From 1925 to 1927 Eliava stayed again at the Pasteur Institute, where he met the French-Canadian researcher Félix Hubert d'Hérelle , who discovered the bacteriophage. Eliava was now a professor of microbiology at the University of Tbilisi and had both resources and influence. Enthusiastic about d'Hérelle's phage research, he offered him a professorship in Tbilisi in the hope of being able to establish a world center for research on phages there. A suitable plot of land had been available on the right bank of the Kura since 1926 .

D'Hérelle accepted the offer and arrived in Tbilisi in October 1933. He brought laboratory equipment and furniture from Paris and worked with Eliava on the future institute project. He toured Georgia and the Soviet Union, gave lectures on bacteriophages and met the Soviet Supreme Commissioner for Health in Moscow . There he was offered his own institute for phage therapy. Back in France in 1935, d'Hérelle waited in vain for a visa.

In 1933/34 Eliava proposed the establishment of the Tbilisi Bacteriophage Institute, building on the Bacteriological Institute and with the support of the Soviet government (decree of April 24, 1936). In 1937 Eliava got into an intrigue and was arrested under Stalin's reign of terror and executed as an "enemy of the people".

1938 to 1988

In 1938 the Institute for Microbiology, Epidemiology and Bacteriophages was created from the merger of the Institute for Bacteriophage Research and the Institute for Microbiology and Epidemiology, founded in 1936 . Until 1951 it was run by the People's Commissariat for Health in Georgia, then subordinated to the Soviet Ministry of Health and operated as the Institute for Vaccines and Sera .

While bacteriophage therapy was subsequently also pursued in Moscow and Wroclaw (the treatment center there is operated by the Polish Academy of Sciences ), but there was little interest and research in the West, the institute in Tbilisi developed into the center of the lack of antibiotics Soviet bacteriophage research (as part of the Georgian Academy of Sciences ). Bacteriophages were thought to be Stalin's answer to western antibiotics.

Historical phage preparation against salmonella

The Soviet military was the largest customer for phage preparations, which were mass-produced for oral and topical use in infections. They were used to treat and prevent diseases such as typhus , blood poisoning and diarrhea, among other things . Red Army soldiers had phage tablets against intestinal infections and for the prophylaxis of salmonellosis with them. Georgian troops fighting in breakaway Abkhazia in 1991 were supplied with phage sprays against Staphylococcus aureus , Escherichia coli , Pseudomonas aeruginosa , Streptococcus pyogenes and Proteus vulgaris .

In 1988 the institute in Tbilisi was restructured and incorporated into the scientific industrial union "Bakteriophage" (SIU "Bakteriophage"). The scientific department was renamed the Georgi Eliava Institute for Bacteriophage Research in honor of the now rehabilitated founder Georgi Eliava .

1989 to 2019

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the institute produced phage preparations mainly for the now independent Georgia. Production sank to a minimum. Production facilities were privatized. There was a lack of capital, electricity, heating and cooling. International investors' plans came to nothing. In 2002 the institute was still struggling to survive. With the increasing awareness of the global development of resistance to antibiotics , the interest in bacteriophages as an alternative therapy option also increased.

In 2019 the institute is in good condition. It has seven research departments: laboratories for general and applied microbiology, for microbial ecology and molecular biology , for virology and immunology , a department for research and development and the world's largest collection of bacterial strains and bacteriophages. More than 100 researchers, technicians and administrators work here. The current director is Mzia Kutateladze. The institute is supported with funds from the USA and the EU.

The Eliava Foundation is a non-profit organization with spin-offs of companies for the development and application of phage products for the protection of humans, animals, plants and the environment. The institute's premises include a therapy center for patients, a pharmacy and a diagnostic center. At the same address, the company JSC Biochimpharm produces numerous bacteriophage products in liquid and tablet form for phage therapy, and since 2008 also for export. The Dutch company Micreos also produces phage products for food safety in cooperation with the Eliava Institute .

museum

The main building houses an exhibition on the history of bacteriophage research in Tbilisi.

literature

  • Anna Kuchment: The Forgotten Cure. The Past and Future of Phage Therapy. Copernicus Books / Springer Science, New York 2012
  • Thomas Häusler: Healthy through viruses. A way out of the antibiotic crisis. Piper, Munich 2003
  • Benedikt Johannes Hänggi: The phage therapy and the problem of its realization. A contribution to the current return to a medical-historical phenomenon . Dissertation, Bern 2004
  • William C. Summers: Félix d'Hérelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology. Yale University Press, New Haven 1999, pp. 161-173

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b samegrelo.geguchadze.com
  2. ↑ Thomas Häusler: Healthy through viruses. A way out of the antibiotic crisis. Piper, Munich 2003, pp. 138-141
  3. ↑ Anna Kuchment: The Forgotten Cure . New York 2012, pp. 32-33
  4. ↑ Richard Stone: Bacteriophage Therapy: Stalin's Forgotten Cure. Science 298 (5594) (2002) 728-31
  5. ↑ Thomas Häusler: Rescue from the sewer. DIE ZEIT January 11, 2001 [1]

Coordinates: 41 ° 44 ′ 2.7 ″  N , 44 ° 46 ′ 19.2 ″  E