The audience at the HLF 2026 – Science and the City session on AMR didn’t expect to cheer for viruses, Naresh Nunna of Neo Science Hub, reports.
On a lazy Sunday (Jan 25) afternoon at Sattva Knowledge City, when most people would rather be elsewhere, over 200 science enthusiasts, healthcare workers, and curious citizens sat listening to three people explain why bacteria-eating viruses might be medicine’s last defense against antibiotic-resistant infections that modern drugs can no longer kill.
The conversation, titled “Good Viruses: Frontier Tools Against Bacteria,” turned out to be less about science and more about survival. One man’s refusal to accept a “learn-to-live-with-it” diagnosis led to a journey across the world. A researcher’s shift from hunting TB drugs to studying “living antibiotics.” A communicator’s mission to tell a different story about the microbial world we live in.
By the time it ended, the single skeptic in the room who believed all viruses were villains had plenty of company rethinking that assumption.
“Are all viruses bad?” Sarah Hyder Iqbal, the moderator, had asked at the start.
One hand went up.
Iqbal, a former research scientist at the Scripps Research Institute and co-founder of Superheroes Against Superbugs, smiled. She had 50 minutes to change minds. By the end, she had succeeded not by proving bacteriophages were good, but by proving we had forgotten something important: that the microbial world is far more complex than the enemy-versus-hero narrative the COVID-19 pandemic had burned into our brains.
“Your body has as many microbial cells as human cells,” she said. “Even the genes that help your fetus connect to your mother’s womb come from viruses. We’re products of viruses and microbes. Perhaps we should rethink our relationship with them.”
It was a philosophical opening to what would become an entirely practical conversation.
THE CRISIS NOBODY TALKS ABOUT
The World Health Organization lists 12 bacteria that have become resistant to nearly all available antibiotics. Infections that used to be treatable now kill. Surgeries that used to be routine now carry the risk of untreatable post-operative infections. The antibiotics we bet our lives on for 80 years are losing their power.
Prof. Urmi Bajpai, a researcher from Delhi University’s Acharya Narendra Dev College, set out to provide the historical context most people don’t know. In the late 1800s, an English scientist named Ernest Henry Hankin came to India studying cholera. He noticed something odd: water from the Ganges River, even when it contained cholera bacteria, could kill those bacteria. He had witnessed bacteriophages—viruses that kill bacteria—though he didn’t know what they were.
By the 1920s, scientists formally discovered phages and started using them to treat infections. Then penicillin arrived. Antibiotics were simpler, could be manufactured reliably, and didn’t require understanding of living systems. The West abandoned phages almost overnight.
“Eastern Europe never did,” Prof. Bajpai said. “Countries like Georgia continued using phages for almost a century. Now, when antibiotics are failing us, they still have that knowledge.”
It was a reminder that the scientific world is not a level playing field. The decisions made during the Cold War—which discoveries were pursued, which abandoned—still shape what medicines we have available today.
HOW A VIRUS BECOMES A SNIPER
The science itself is straightforward once you understand the metaphor. Antibiotics, Prof. Bajpai explained, are like scatterguns. They hit broadly, killing not just the harmful bacteria but also the beneficial bacteria in your gut that keep you healthy. Bacteriophages are snipers. Each type of phage targets only one specific bacterial strain, leaving everything else untouched.
More importantly, bacteriophages and bacteria are locked in an evolutionary arms race. When bacteria develop resistance to a phage, the phage evolves to overcome it. And here’s where it gets fascinating: bacteria that develop resistance to phages often lose the genes that give them antibiotic resistance in the process.
“It’s a Catch-22 for bacteria,” Prof. Bajpai said. “They can’t simultaneously stay resistant to both phages and antibiotics. This is why phages and antibiotics together might be more powerful than either one alone.”
She mentioned biofilms—protective layers bacteria form that are 1,000 times more resistant to antibiotics. Phages can penetrate biofilms. They have no known toxicity in humans. They’ve been used safely for a century in Georgia. They are, by every measure, a tool modern medicine had forgotten it possessed.
Her lab is now working on endolysins—enzymes from phages that can be used independently to degrade bacterial cell walls. These could work as protein-based antibiotics, potentially sidestepping some of the regulatory caution around using living viruses as medicine.
THE MAN WHO REFUSED TO ACCEPT PERMANENT DISEASE
But the most powerful moment came when Pranav Johri spoke.
Johri is not a scientist. He’s a publisher and businessman who in 2016 developed a multi-drug-resistant prostate infection. For six months, he had persistent fever, debilitating pain, and progressive weakness. His doctors tried every antibiotic regimen available. Nothing worked. Eventually, his physician told him to accept it. “You’ll have to learn to manage it,” the doctor said.
Johri refused.
He researched pre-antibiotic treatments and found bacteriophage therapy. He contacted the Eliava Phage Therapy Center in Tbilisi, Georgia. In late 2016, he became the first known Indian patient to undergo phage therapy there.
Three courses of personalized phage cocktails matched to his specific bacterial strain later, he was symptom-free.
He remains so, ten years later.
What Johri did next matters more than his personal recovery. Rather than simply get well, he founded Vitalis Phage Therapy in 2018 with his wife, establishing India’s official partnership with Eliava. To date, his organization has facilitated phage therapy for over 330 Indian patients with a success rate exceeding 70%.
He reduced diagnostic testing turnaround time from 20 days to 3 days by building partnerships with Indian labs. He created two treatment frameworks—one where patients stay in India and coordinate remotely with Eliava, another for local treatment. He’s now chairperson of the Society for Bacteriophage Research and Therapy, India, and collaborating with ICMR on national frameworks.
“I’m not a scientist,” he said in the session. “But I’ve lived the difference between accepting a disease as permanent and finding a cure. Phage therapy gave me my life back. Now I want to make it available to everyone in India suffering from antibiotic-resistant infections.”
When he finished speaking, there was silence. Not awkward silence. The kind where people are rethinking something fundamental.
WHAT STANDS IN THE WAY
The barriers, all three speakers agreed, are not scientific. They are bureaucratic, cultural, and financial.
Limited awareness tops the list. Most people don’t know bacteriophages exist. Most doctors have never heard of them. Most regulatory bodies treat them with caution despite a century of safety data.
“That’s why we need these forums,” Prof. Bajpai said, gesturing to the audience. “With enough attention, I think phage therapy will get the limelight it deserves.”
There are legitimate regulatory concerns. Current approval frameworks were designed for one-size-fits-all pharmaceuticals. Phage therapy is inherently personalized—a patient’s phage cocktail is customized to their specific bacterial strain. That requires a different kind of regulatory thinking that most countries haven’t developed yet.
India needs to establish dialogue between researchers, clinicians, and regulatory bodies like CDSCO and ICMR to create pathways for approval. Belgium did it in 2018 with their “Magistral Phage” framework. Georgia has been doing it since the 1920s. India can too, but only if someone decides it matters.
Meanwhile, Johri advocated for “compassionate phage therapy”—allowing individual patients with exhausted conventional options to access phages now, while broader regulatory approval is pursued. It’s a practical middle ground that could save lives while the bureaucracy catches up.
RETHINKING THE MICROBIAL WORLD
By the end, the conversation had moved beyond bacteria and viruses. It became a discussion about how we tell stories about nature—whether we see the microbial world as an enemy to be vanquished or an ecosystem to be understood.
Iqbal brought it home. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Right now, bacteriophages have become our friends. Or at least, we’re trying to explore that possibility.”
It’s not a romantic notion. It’s not even entirely new—as Prof. Bajpai’s history showed, we knew this once. But as antibiotic resistance accelerates and new drug pipelines slow to a crawl, bacteriophages represent something modern medicine can’t ignore: a solution we already have, refined over a century of use elsewhere, waiting to be deployed.
The audience filed out. Many stayed to ask more questions, to get contact details, to understand how they might help or benefit. One man asked if there was a way to donate to Johri’s organization. A young woman asked if she should pursue a PhD in phage research.
This is what happens when science stops being abstract and becomes personal. When someone tells you they were told to accept a permanent disease, and then tells you they didn’t. When researchers stop speaking in jargon and start explaining why they believe their work matters. For the one skeptic in the audience who initially thought all viruses were bad, the answer seemed to have shifted.
Sometimes, it turns out, the enemy of your enemy really is your friend.
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