6

To mark the twenty-fifth edition of the Francophone Days of Virology, Professor Frédéric Laurent held a dedicated conference, entitled “Phages and phage therapy: From Félix d’Hérelle to phages 2.0.” During this event, Frédéric Laurent detailed the history of bacteriophages, or phages: from their discovery and their first use in early 1920s, through to their abandonment in the Western world in the 1940s in favor of antibiotics, and finally their recent resurgence in response to multi-resistant bacterial strains. Throughout this presentation, Professor Laurent also outlined the general functioning of phages, their chain of bioproduction and quality control, as well as the progress to be made in the compassionate handling of patients in situations of therapeutic failure.