Our Research Programs

What are (PJIs)

Prosthetic joint infections (PJIs) remain one of the most devastating complications in orthopaedic surgery. Despite standard treatment—often involving multiple surgeries and prolonged courses of antibiotics—failure rates can reach 30–40 percent. For patients, the consequences go far beyond the infection itself: repeated hospital admissions, long-term disability, psychological toll, and in some cases, amputation or even death. With a reported mortality rate of 20 percent, PJI outcomes rival those seen in oncology.

Advancing Treatment

Dr. Hesham Abdelbary— one of our orthopaedic surgeons whose practice focuses on complex joint replacement and musculoskeletal oncology—is currently conducting research to explore novel therapies aimed at improving outcomes for these patients.

Targeted Bacterial Strains

Each phage type has a high specificity to a certain bacterial strain. Once a phage infects a bacterial cell, it overtakes its cellular machinery and functions as self-amplifying antibacterial therapy—infecting bacterial cells, lysing them, and releasing more phages directly into the infection site.

Crucially, they also produce enzymes that break down biofilm—a protective slime layer that forms on implants and shields bacteria from antibiotics and the immune system. By disrupting this barrier, phages allow antibiotics to penetrate and work more effectively, creating a synergistic effect that allows for a sequential treatment strategy.

Individual Patient

This is a single patient study (SPS) that aims to test the bacteriophage treatment as an experimental treatment on a patient suffering from chronic periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) of the right hip. This patients has been suffering from an infection in the right sided hip arthroplasty with a multidrug resistant (MDR) strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria. All treatment options for this type of infection have been exhausted. If this patient remains without treatment then there is a high risk of mortality secondary to sepsis and the only remaining surgical option for this patient is a hind quarter amputation which will be a devastating surgery that will largely affect this patients quality of life. However, a large number of published case series have shown the positive impact of combining bacteriophage therapy with antibiotics to achieve a synergistic antibacterial effect and overcome possible resistance development to clear the infection. Therefore we intend to try the bacteriophage therapy on this patients infected hip in the aim to control the infection and improve the patients quality of life.

Novel Therapy

Dr. Hesham Abdelbary— one of our orthopaedic surgeons whose practice focuses on complex joint replacement and musculoskeletal oncology—is currently conducting research to explore novel therapies aimed at improving outcomes for these patients. Dr. Abdelbary's team is studying bacteriophages, or phages: viruses that naturally target and destroy bacterial cells. First discovered in the early 1900s by a French-Canadian scientist, Félix D'Hérelle, phages have seen renewed attention thanks to advancements in biotechnology that allow researchers to unravel phages’ unique antibacterial benefits.