Eliava Institute of Phage Therapy

Image des bâtiments de l'Institut Eliava à Tbilissi (Géorgie)

Eliava Phage Therapy Center (Eliava Institute)

The Eliava Phage Therapy Center - located on the grounds of the Eliava Institute of Bacteriophages, Microbiology, and Virology (EIBMV) in Tbilisi, Georgia - is the culmination of over 100 years of scientific and medical expertise in phage therapy. The modern institute is highly specialized in treating many antibiotic-resistant infections with bacteriophages. The specialties are internal medicine, pediatrics, urology, gynecology, ENT, endocrinology, and surgery. Self-financed, the search for new phages is ongoing. At the Eliava Institute, phages are produced, patients are diagnosed and treated. To understand how a phage therapy treatment works, everything is explained on the page "Phage Therapy Treatment".

The specialist doctors at the Eliava Institute

Phage therapy treatment requires specialists in each discipline, which you will find at the Eliava Institute. At the Eliava Institute, you will meet during your medical consultations the doctors and/or surgeons suited to your pathology: urologist, infectious disease specialist, pulmonologist, pediatrician, specialized surgeon, cardiologist, dermatologist, endocrinologist, gastroenterologist, neurologist, ...The institute is run by experienced specialists in the treatment of difficult chronic bacterial diseases, including:
  • – Skin and soft tissue infections associated with burns, wounds, human bites, animal or insect stings, cellulitis, abscesses, folliculitis, impetigo, and pyoderma.
    – Bone and joint infections like bacterial arthritis and osteomyelitis, infected prostheses.
    – Eye infections such as bacterial conjunctivitis.
    – Urinary tract infections associated with prostatitis, urethritis, and cystitis.
    – Ear, nose, throat infections associated with sinusitis, pharyngitis, middle ear and external ear infections.
    – Respiratory infections associated with cystic fibrosis and chronic respiratory diseases.
    – Oral cavity infections, such as gingivitis and stomatitis.
    – Gastrointestinal conditions such as bacterial gastroenteritis and bacterial overgrowth syndrome, irritable bowel disorder.

Giorgi Eliava and the creation of the Eliava Institute

Georgian Professor Giorgi Eliava came to work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and met the discoverer of phage therapy: Félix d'Hérelle. They both worked extensively on phage therapy and became very close friends. So much so that Félix d'Hérelle and Giorgi Eliava went together to Tbilisi in 1921 to create an Institute entirely dedicated to phage therapy.This is how the Eliava Institute of Phage Therapy was born in 1923.Despite the advent of antibiotics, Georgians never stopped the practice of phage therapy.

The Eliava Phage Therapy Institute supplied and treated the entire Soviet Union with bacteriophages (phages) for decades, and still now supplies Ukraine, Poland, Russia, and of course, Georgia.

The Eliava Institute is the only center in the world that has such a bank of bacteriophages (6000) and such experience. Their doctors, scientists, and laboratories constantly practice phage therapy and are the world experts in it.