The center currently treats patients with life-threatening multi-drug resistant infections with phage therapy, on a case-by-case basis, through the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) compassionate use program.

IPATH aims to initiate phase I/II phage therapy clinical trials, focusing on patients with cystic fibrosis and infections related to implantable hardware, such as pacemakers and prosthetic joints.

To date, the majority of phage therapy in the United States has been administered intravenously (IV), by utilizing the Emergency Investigational New Drug (eIND) process which is regulated by the FDA.

They were involved in the treatment of five other phage therapy patients at UC San Diego School of Medicine and consulted on numerous cases throughout the United States and Europe, before officially establishing IPATH in June 2018.

Since establishing in 2018, IPATH has been led by Co-directors Strathdee and Schooley, and have set out to lay the foundation for an academic center on the forefront of translational phage therapy research.