Ruweyda Sayid PhD, Biological Sciences

PhD student

PhD project: The use of bacteriophages (phages) to treat antibiotic-resistant infections

Since receiving the Black Futures scholarship and beginning my PhD at Southampton, I have set up the infrastructure necessary to tackle a significant threat to global health and safety: antibiotic resistance.

My PhD project broadly focuses on the use of bacteriophages (phages) to treat antibiotic-resistant infections. Phages are viruses that specifically attack and kill bacteria and have been used since the 1910s to treat bacterial infections. However, the accessibility and general awareness of phages outside of Georgia and Russia is virtually non-existent.

We have thus developed and launched a citizen science project which aims to tackle these issues while increasing the collection of phages in my lab for my research. The Phage Collection Project is an outreach project, whereby members of the public collect samples of water from the local environment, from which I isolate phages.

The project also aims to collect public opinions and knowledge on phage therapy. This will form a vital component in my advocacy efforts with policymakers and relevant stakeholder industries in my future works with this project.

So far, we have 444 phages against 15 clinically relevant strains of bacteria in the collection – but we hope that this biobank of phages will only get bigger as my PhD progresses.

My outreach efforts were presented at the 25th Biennial Evergreen International Phage Meeting in August 2023. We are now working to globalise sampling efforts by translating our materials into other languages, and launching a website to advertise the phage collection project.

We hope that my research will reveal insights into how phages may interact with bacteria in complex microbial communities - a yet unexplored field of phage research - and have also begun building a macroscope to study these complex interactions in more detail. I am really grateful for the opportunity to pursue my research passions in this way and look forward to making significant impacts in research and public policy.