The George Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage, Microbiology and Virology has been active since the 1930s in the field of phage therapy, which is used to combat microbial infection .HistoryThe institute was opened in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1923, and was a bacteriology laboratory. Its founder, Prof. George Eliava, was not aware of bacteriophages until 1919-1921. In those years he met Felix d'Herelle during a visit to the Pasteur Institute in Paris. There, Eliava was enthusiastic about the potential of phages in the curing of bacterial disease, and invited d'Herelle to visit his laboratory in Georgia.D'Herelle visited Tbilisi twice in 1933-34, and agreed to work with Prof. Eliava. It has been suggested that d'Herelle became enamored of the communist idea. In 1934, Joseph Stalin invited d'Herelle to the institute in Tbilisi; he accepted and worked there for about 18 months. D'Herelle dedicated one of his books to Stalin, The Bacteriophage and the Phenomenon of Cure, written and published in Tbilisi in 1935.D'Herelle had planned to take up permanent residence in Tbilisi and had started to build a cottage on the grounds of the Institute; it would later house the KGB's Georgian headquarters.However, the collaboration between the two scientists was not to be. Around the time d'Herelle was to take up residence, in 1937 George Eliava was executed and denounced as an enemy of the people. D'Herelle fled from Tbilisi and, some believe, never returned. Another account states that he was in Paris at the time of Eliava's execution, and decided not to return. D'Herelle's book was also banned from distribution.