Biography

Alex is a microbiologist and phage therapy researcher who has been working at WIMR for the past eight years. She began her career with broad interests in antimicrobial resistance but focused on phage biology and therapy during her PhD in Serbia and subsequent postdoctoral research in Australia.

Since 2018, she has been instrumental in advancing clinical research on intravenous GMP-grade phage therapy, including one of the first systematic trials in critically ill patients with. Her work has contributed to international regulatory discussions and informed the design of ongoing clinical trials.

Alex’s research spans both basic and translational science, with a focus on the complex interactions between therapeutic phages and bacterial pathogens, studied experimentally in clinical or infection-like scenarios both in vitro and in vivo. She has made important contributions to understanding bacterial L-forms – cell wall-deficient states that evade both antibiotics and certain phages – and is developing improved in vitro testing methods to better predict therapeutic outcomes.

She also supports clinical teams through therapeutic phage monitoring, including real-time analysis of phage and bacterial kinetics and immune responses during treatment, helping to inform clinical decisions and improve patient care.

Beyond her research, Alex served as an Executive Board Officer of the International Society for Viruses of Microbes (2021–2024) and was part of the organising committee for the ISVM’s Viruses Of Microbes 2024 conference in Cairns. She also played a key role in the ESCMID Study Group for Non-traditional Antibacterial Therapy (ESGNTA), coordinating its first educational courses and guest editing a special issue on personalised phage therapy.

Adjunct roles

Additional information

Alex leads a translational research program aimed at improving the clinical reliability of phage therapy for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. Her work addresses two key challenges: the emergence of phage resistance during treatment and the limitations of current diagnostics in predicting phage efficacy under real-world infection conditions.

Her research investigates interactions between therapeutic phages and bacterial pathogens in infection-like scenarios, including stress-induced states such as L-forms. These bacterial adaptations can make pathogens temporarily resistant to both antibiotics and phages, contributing to treatment failure. Alex is developing diagnostic tools that simulate these conditions to improve the accuracy of phage susceptibility testing.

She also studies how phage resistance evolves during therapy and uses in vitro models to forecast resistance pathways and guide the development of more robust phage formulations. In parallel, she leads therapeutic phage monitoring efforts, analysing phage and bacterial kinetics and immune responses during treatment to support clinical decision-making and improve patient outcomes.

Projects:

• Phage-informed Diagnostics for Precision Therapy
• Targeting Hidden Bacterial States in AMR
• Therapeutic Phage Monitoring

WIMR email address: aleksandra.fabijan@wimr.org.au

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3172-2375

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=byYS_7EAAAAJ&hl=en

Current grants

Affiliations

University of Sydney (Faculty of Medicine and Health), Sydney ID

Professional Associations and Organisations

Awards and recognition