Bacteriophage Therapy of Bacterial Infections: The Rediscovered Frontier

Abstract

Antibiotic-resistant infections present a serious health concern worldwide. It is estimated that there are 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections and 35,000 deaths in the United States every year. Such microorganisms include Acinetobacter, Enterobacterioceae, Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus and Mycobacterium. Alternative treatment methods are, thus, necessary to treat such infections. Bacteriophages are viruses of bacteria. In a lytic infection, the newly formed phage particles lyse the bacterium and continue to infect other bacteria. In the early 20th century, d’Herelle, Bruynoghe and Maisin used bacterium-specific phages to treat bacterial infections. Bacteriophages are being identified, purified and developed as pharmaceutically acceptable macromolecular “drugs,” undergoing strict quality control. Phages can be applied topically or delivered by inhalation, orally or parenterally. Some of the major drug-resistant infections that are potential targets of pharmaceutically prepared phages are Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Acinetobacter baumannii.

Practical Assessment of an Interdisciplinary Bacteriophage Delivery Pipeline for Personalized Therapy of Gram-Negative Bacterial Infections

“…Rotating the phage or phage cocktail to another matching phage or phage cocktail, such as on a bi-weekly basis, may prevent treatment failure. Most importantly, the phage-bacteria combination(s) must match, which is demonstrated using standard phage workflows, such as plaque assays or killing curves [11,16,30,50,52,62].…”

“…In vitro studies may not reflect pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics in the body, and phages co-evolve with bacteria, allowing bacteria to develop resistance to the administered phages [32,37,52,58,64,68,69]. This underscores the importance of monitoring the match between phages and bacteria and having several suitable phages in stock as a reserve [16,39,62]. Additionally, phage titre of the formulated phage solution is closely monitored by phage experts to avoid treatment with too low concentrations, as titre drops are common with some phages [13,58].…”

“Mundo da virologia”: estratégia didática no ensino de Microbiologia

“…Além disso, tem aplicações no desenvolvimento de vacinas, biofármacos, imunoterapias, terapias gênicas, biopesticidas, técnicas de biotecnologia e engenharia genética (CZPAR; STEINMETZ, 2017;HAY et al, 2020;DÜZGÜNEŞ et al, 2021).…”

Characterization of N4-like Pseudomonas Phage vB_Pae-PA14 Isolated from Seawater Sampled in Thailand

“…Bacteriophages (phages) have gained attention recently. 9 Viruses infecting bacteria are abundant and play ecological roles. 10,11 The previous review suggested that phages have their uses as vaccines and therapeutic agents.…”