What is phage therapy and how might it be a solution to the loss of effective antibiotics?
How can phage therapy be used as an alternative to antibiotics in treating some infections?
What is phage therapy Why is it effective Why is it selective?
What is phage therapy Why might it be an alternative to antibiotics?
What is the advantage of phage therapy over antibiotics?
How is phage therapy administered?
What are three ways in which bacteria defend themselves against phages?
How phage therapy is effective over antibiotics against multidrug resistant pathogenic bacteria?
What type of energy is required for new bacteriophages to be assembled?
Can bacteriophages replace antibiotics?
Is phage therapy effective?
As mentioned above, phage therapy is thought to be most effective when used in combination with antibiotics. However, some studies have looked at the use of phage therapy alone. The most beneficial approach is likely to depend on the specific situation. Phages, unlike antibiotics, do not destabilize the microbiome.
Where is Phage Therapy conducted?
The Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH) at the University of California, San Diego is currently conducting phage therapy trials and research. However, these studies are very exclusive.
What is a phage?
Bacteriophages, also known as phages, are viruses that infect and destroy specific bacteria. For example, phage VB_EcoS-Golestan has been shown to target E. Coli, one of the most common UTI causing bacteria.
When was phage therapy first used?
Bacteriophage therapy dates way back to 1919, when phages were first used in birds to protect against Salmonella gallinarum. And though discovered almost a century ago, the western research into phage therapy was largely abandoned after penicillin was proven to be an effective antibiotic.
What is monophage therapy?
Monophage therapy refers to the use of a single phage type which attacks a single species of bacteria. This form of therapy may lead to resistance as the bacteria can learn to protect against this one type of phage. 2. Polyphage or Phage Cocktail Therapy.
What is a genetically modified phage?
Engineered or genetically modified phages are phages that are specifically coded to combat multiple drug resistance and biofilms. 4. Phage Therapy Combined with Antibiotic Therapy. Phage therapy in combination with antibiotics may be the most effective use of phages.
How much does phage therapy cost?
The Phage Therapy Center in Georgia offers treatment to patients all around the world for about $3,000-$5,000, depending on the treatment.
What is phage therapy?
The practice of phage therapy, which uses bacterial viruses (phages) to treat bacterial infections, has been around for almost a century. The universal decline in the effectiveness of antibiotics has generated renewed interest in revisiting this practice. Conventionally, phage therapy relies on the use of naturally-occurring phages to infect ...
Where is phage therapy performed?
Human trials for phage therapy have taken place for almost a century at several institutes in Eastern Europe, the most famous of which are the Eliava Institute of Bacteriophage and the Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy in Wroclaw, Poland.
Is phage therapy an alternative to antibiotics?
Core tip:Phage therapy is widely being reconsidered as an alternative to antibiotics. The use of naturally-occurring phages to treat bacterial infection has a contentious history in western medicine. However, the emergent landscape of phage-based antimicrobials has advanced well beyond traditional methods.
What is phage cocktail?
For treatment, lytic phages are compiled into preparations called “phage cocktails” which consist of multiple phages proven to have in vitroefficacy against the target pathogen. HISTORY OF PHAGE THERAPY.
Is phage therapy safe?
Currently there are no phage therapy products approved for human use in the EU or United States. However, in the food industry, there are several commercial phage preparations used for biocontrol of bacterial pathogens that are approved by the FDA under the classification of “generally considered as safe.”.
Is phage biocontrol effective?
Evidence suggests that phage biocontrol can be an effective method for improving food safety at numerous stages in meat production and processing, and also has potential to reduce bacterial contamination in fruits, vegetables, and dairy products[55].
What are the two proteins that are used in phage lysis?
One of which is the transmembrane protein holin and the other is a peptidoglycan cell wall hydrolase called endolysin (lysin). These two proteins work together in triggering the lysis of the bacterial cell.
What is phage therapy?
Phage therapy is the clinical or veterinary application of bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) as antibacterial “drugs.” More generally, phages can be used as biocontrol agents against plant as well as foodborne pathogens. In this chapter, we consider the therapeutic use of phage cocktails, which is the combining of two or more phage types to produce more pharmacologically diverse formulations. The primary motivation for the use of cocktails is their broader spectra of activity in comparison to individual phage isolates: they can impact either more bacterial types or achieve effectiveness under a greater diversity of conditions. The combining of phages can also facilitate better targeting of multiple strains making up individual bacterial species or covering multiple species that might be responsible for similar disease states, in general providing, relative to individual phage isolates, a greater potential for presumptive or empirical treatment. Contrasting the use of phage banks, or even phage isolation against specific etiologies that have been obtained directly from patients under treatment, here we consider the utility as well as potential shortcomings associated with the use of phage cocktails as therapeutic antibacterial agents.
Is phage therapy sustainable?
Phage therapy is potentially a more sustainable treatment option since phages are self-managing in the sense that they will proliferate as long as there are host cells in an environment.
How does phage therapy help cholera?
Phage therapy for cholera was established as a helpful tool for treatment of cholera patients because phages killed large number of bacteria thus reducing burden of the pathogenic toxin and ultimately transmission of the disease (Summers, 2001 ). The details of phage therapy have been reviewed by Fazil and Singh (2011). The first report of phage therapy that used high doses of anticholera phages (100–200 phages per Vibrio) indicated that phages were able to kill cholera bacterium but not to complete many cycles of replication and amplification ( Summers, 2001 ). When phage therapy was conducted on ill patients in hospital and compared with tetracycline treatment and with fluid replacement alone as a control, it was noted that very high dose phage therapy was comparable to tetracycline in reducing the excretion of vibrios in stools ( Marcuk et al., 1971; Summers, 2001 ). This reduction, however, did not translate into overall clinical improvement, i.e., shorter duration of diarrhea and more rapid recovery ( Marcuk et al., 1971; Summers, 2001 ). Several problems were noted that complicated the evaluation of phage therapy in cholera: first was the discovery of diversity of serotypes of vibrios and the varying susceptibility of these bacteria to the phage stocks employed; second was the rapid transit of ingests phage through gastrointestinal tract of cholera patients, a fact that may have precluded second round of phage infection essential in low multiplicity of infection (MOI) therapy ( Summers, 2001 ). Several reports had shown utilization of phages in treatment of severe cases of cholera ( Marcuk et al., 1971 ). Considering the need for such prophylactic action at that time, the cholera phage therapy could be argued successful. The impetus for considering phage-mediated regulation would be the fact that phage-resistant strains rarely occur in natural habitats. Figure 5 shows counter strategies that can be used against multiple drug-resistant V. cholerae. It is conceivable that, although bacteria can develop resistance to phage, the resistance might be easier to overcome than resistance to antibiotics. Just as bacteria can evolve resistance, viruses can evolve to overcome resistance; however, the ability to evolve raises serious safety questions.
Is phage therapy effective for acute enteric infections?
The use of phage therapy is a particularly promising alternative to broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment for acute enteric infections because typically intestinal concentration of infecting bacteria is high, the causative agent and strain may be suitably diagnosed using rapid diagnostic tools, and application of phage therapy with a sufficiently high initial phage dose would promote rapid in situ phage multiplication and decrease in the host bacterial population [14,31–33]. In conditions where lytic dynamics tend to dominate, phage therapy may be successful to treat acute infections in the gut [34].
Abstract
The current status of phage therapy approaches is reviewed and possible hurdles to a practical medical application of bacteriophages in Western countries are identified as discussed at a recent EMBO meeting on “Viruses of Microbes” in Brussels.
Keywords
The author has attended three conferences over the last half year dealing with phage therapy (PT) as a major conference topic: the First Bacteriophage meeting at Oxford University, the Banbury conference at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the Brussels EMBO meeting on Viruses of Microbes II (VoM II).
What are the advantages of phage therapy?
Advantages of Phage Therapy 1 Phages cannot grow without host bacteria. Therefore they die after destructing pathogen. 2 Since phages are viruses they are readily cleared out of our bodies by our immune system. 3 This technique is easy enough to administer such as orally, intravenously and topically 4 Phage therapy is more host-specific than antibiotics and also reduces the potential for secondary infections. 5 It doesn’t require repeated doses because once applied phages will grow it in vivo. 6 Antibiotics cannot penetrate biofilm but bacteriophages synthesize enzymes that breakdowns the biofilm and destroy easily. 7 Manufacturing the bacteriophages is far cheaper than antibiotics. 8 Since phages consist of nucleic acids and proteins, they are nontoxic. 9 Phages can be readily employed to treat antibiotic-resistant infections. 10 Phages are easily discovered, often from sewage and other waste materials that contain high bacterial concentrations. 11 Phages can be versatile in terms of formulation development. 12 They may be used alone or with antibiotics and other drugs.
Where is phage therapy used?
It is widely used, especially in countries such as Russia and Georgia, which do not respond to conventional antibiotics.
Is phage therapy safe for humans?
In general, the method of treatment against bacterial infection using bacterial virus is considered as phage therapy. It is safe for human wellbeing, animals as well as plants. According to this method, the phages attach to the bacterial cells and infuse the bacterial genome into the cell.
Is phage therapy an easy invention?
There are probably more medicines accessible in the world than diseases, but not all medicines are easily invented. Some drugs do not detect the disease for years. Phage therapy is certainly not an easy invention. Probably the credit for any invention goes to one but it is not complete. In this context the Englishman Frederick Twort in 1915 and the French-Canadian Felix d’Herelle in 1917 discovered this method and also discovered the secret that bacteriophages exist in any place bacteria flourish such as in sewers, in streams and even in the stools of convalescent strength patients. In this way, the principle of phage therapy was perceived by many in the process of preventing bacterial infections. It was not easy to invent. How difficult it was to contemplate the micro-organisms in a dirty place where people could vomit even when they saw them with the naked eyes and to use them at the risk of the patient’s health.
Is phage therapy a viable alternative to antibiotics?
Phage therapy technique was not invented many centuries ago, but its use has been a great success in the medical field. Although it has not been used globally, it is now a viable alternative to antibiotics. While talking about its application; first of all one has to think about its availability. In fact, phage is a ubiquitous bacterial virus. Once specific bacterial pathogens have been identified, bacteriophages must be collected because not all phages can kill all pathogens. It is found in soil, sewage, drains and rivers and in every area where bacteria is found.
Can antibiotics cure bacterial infections?
Antibiotics cure bacterial infections as soon as possible, but the side effects are really risky and a complex concern. The use of phage therapy is not a new method for bacterial infections but an alternative risk-free treatment of antibiotics.
How do bacteria affect agriculture?
Bacteriophages significantly reduce the environmental impact of antibiotic use in agriculture, while potentially increasing profitability by lowering crop loss. Bacteria can destroy our crops, such as grains, vegetables, fruits, flowers, and the environment as a whole. We depend on nature to survive. In this way, after the bacterial infections spread in agriculture, our livelihood is being destroyed. On the other hand, excessive use of antibiotics has started to appear many negative effects on the environment.