The Eliava Institute of Bacteriophages, located in Tbilisi, Georgia, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. And on this occasion, how could we not mention the discoverer of phage therapy, Félix d’Hérelle? Together with his Georgian colleague and friend Giorgi Eliava, Félix d’Hérelle published his first results in 1917 on a filterable and transferable living organism capable of destroying bacteria

The Pasteur Institute, where Félix d’Hérelle made his discoveries, has devoted a very interesting article to him, retracing his life and career before and after the discovery of phage therapy.

“Félix d’Hérelle’s life path was, to say the least, unusual. Information about his early years is unclear, with some sources claiming that he was born in Paris in 1873, where he attended school, rather than in Montreal. Did he study medicine in Belgium or in Canada? In any case, after managing a whisky distillery and then a chocolate factory in Quebec, Félix d’Hérelle began his scientific career in Guatemala.”

At that time, he was a bacteriologist, having taught himself the discipline, according to his own account. He continued his career in Mexico, where he isolated the infectious agent responsible for locust enteritis, a discovery that led him to take part in efforts to combat these insects in several countries. In 1911, he joined the Pasteur Institute, which later sent him on missions to Argentina, Algeria, Turkey, Tunisia, and Indochina.

In 1917, he discovered that viruses can infect bacteria. He named them bacteriophages and then proposed using them to treat bacterial infections. His findings quickly brought him worldwide recognition. He left the Pasteur Institute in 1921 for the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Leiden, in the Netherlands, and later headed the Department of Bacteriology of the Egyptian Public Health Council in Alexandria.

He went on to teach bacteriology at Yale University in the USA, launched bacteriophage research in several cities of the Soviet Union, and set up a laboratory in Paris to produce bacteriophages for therapeutic purposes. Because of his nationality, he and his family were put under forced residence in Vichy during the Second World War.

His journey took him to Georgia in 1920, where he and fellow Georgian scientist Giorgi ELIAVA founded the ELIAVA PHAGOTHERAPY INSTITUTE.

In 1947, two years before his death, the thirtieth anniversary of his first publication on bacteriophages was celebrated at the Institut Pasteur. This well-traveled scientist had jokingly described himself as “Canadian by nationality and cosmopolitan by character”.

FROM GRASSHOPPERS TO PHAGES

Tunisia, 1915. Félix d’Hérelle, sent by the Pasteur Institute, takes part in the fight against grasshoppers. He observed in crops a coccobacillus that attacks these insects – a bacillus he had discovered in Mexico – “virgin beaches” signifying the disappearance of bacteria. Back in Paris, d’Hérelle carried out a series of experiments and, using samples from a patient at the Pasteur hospital, demonstrated the existence of a bacterial virus he dubbed a “bacteriophage” (literally: bacteria-eater).

His note entitled “Sur un microbe invisible antagoniste du bacille dysentérique” was submitted to the Académie des Sciences in 1917 by Émile Roux, then Director of the Institut Pasteur. Félix d’Hérelle never stopped studying bacteriophages and promoting phagotherapy, their use in medicine. Although phagotherapy was superseded by antibiotics after the war, bacteriophages made a career as research tools in laboratories the world over.

… and not only! Phages are still used to treat bacterial infections in Georgia.