In May 2014, Teresa and her husband Harry’s world changed overnight. Their first child, Simon, was 17 months old when he was finally diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF). Until that moment, they had never even heard of CF, a rare inherited genetic disease. They didn’t know they were carriers of the defective CF gene. They didn’t have a name for what they had been seeing, only the quiet, growing sense that something wasn’t right.

In our 20th year as Cure4CF, and during CF Awareness Month, I have found myself reflecting more than usual on the ideas that stay with you long after you first come across them. There are some ideas in science that stay with you the moment you hear them. For me, bacteriophages were one of those.