Vladimir Sertić: forgotten pioneer of virology and bacteriophage therapy

Abstract

Vladimir Sertić was a pioneer of bacteriophage research in the period between the two world wars. He was born and educated in Croatia, where he made his initial discoveries, and joined Félix d'Herelle's Laboratoire du Bactériophage in Paris in 1928. Original documents and a box with hundreds of sealed bacteriophage s samples were kept in Sertić's Zagreb home for decades. Following Vladimir's death, his sister passed this archival material to Professor Zdravko Lacković in 1989. Some years later, these artefacts were opened and studied. Additionally, we conducted a literature search using the term ‘Vladimir Sertić’ in the databases PubMed and Google Scholar. After a detailed examination of these data, we established a chronology of his work and compiled a list of his scientific publications. A complete bibliography, with the exception of those publications already cited here, is provided as an appendix. Sertić's key contributions included the exploration of the properties of phage lysins, the devising of a uniform bacteriophage classification system and, in collaboration with his protégé, Nikolai Boulgakov, the isolation of numerous bacteriophage strains, including the famous φX174. Finally it was Sertić's pioneering work in Zagreb that offered confirmation that phages are live agents.