Bacteriophages and Their Immunological Applications against Infectious Threats

Abstract

Bacteriophage therapy dates back almost a century, but the discovery of antibiotics led to a rapid decline in the interests and investments within this field of research. Recently, the novel threat of multidrug-resistant bacteria highlighted the alarming drop in research and development of new antibiotics: 16 molecules were discovered during 1983–87, 10 new therapeutics during the nineties, and only 5 between 2003 and 2007. Phages are therefore being reconsidered as alternative therapeutics. Phage display technique has proved to be extremely promising for the identification of effective antibodies directed against pathogens, as well as for vaccine development. At the same time, conventional phage therapy uses lytic bacteriophages for treatment of infections and recent clinical trials have shown great potential. Moreover, several other approaches have been developed in vitro and in vivo using phage-derived proteins as antibacterial agents. Finally, their use has also been widely considered for public health surveillance, as biosensor phages can be used to detect food and water contaminations and prevent bacterial epidemics. These novel approaches strongly promote the idea that phages and their proteins can be exploited as an effective weapon in the near future, especially in a world which is on the brink of a “postantibiotic era.”

Bacteriophages: Their Structural Organisation and Function

“…Since phages are specific to one species of bacteria, they are unlikely to perturb microbiome bacterial species. Current problems with antibiotic resistance require new approaches, and here phages can be used [12]. For medicinal purposes it is necessary to design a phage that will recognise the specific bacteria we want to eliminate [146].…”

“…This is an important factor that can be used to affect specific bacteria without harming those ones that are essential for the health of humans and animals [10]. In this review we will focus on tailed phages as they are abundant and well studied and could be beneficial to medicine [12]. We will describe the general organisation and structural features of their components revealed by current structural methods.…”

Bacteriophage lambda: The path from biology to theranostic agent

“…It is not surprising that phage display technology has been adapted to vaccine development (Criscuolo, Spadini, Lamanna, Ferro, & Burioni, 2017). In the first application, antigenic peptides or proteins are displayed on the shell surface as fusions to the capsid or decoration proteins (Aghebati-Maleki et al, 2016;Beghetto & Gargano, 2011;Criscuolo et al, 2017). The uniform size and symmetric display of ligands provides an ideal platform in which to present antigens capable of triggering cell-mediated and humoral immune responses (Bakhshinejad & Sadeghizadeh, 2014;Beghetto & Gargano, 2011).…”

“…It is clear that heterologous DNA packaged into the phage capsids is released into the cytosol of eukaryotic cells and has access to the nucleus because functional proteins can be expressed (Lankes et al, 2007;Liu et al, 2014;Tao, Mahalingam, Marasa, et al, 2013). In some cases, the antibody response from phage-delivered DNA is greater than that observed with standard DNA vaccine delivery approaches (Criscuolo et al, 2017;March, Clark, & Jepson, 2004). In the case of lambda, expression cassettes containing DNA vaccines under the control of a suitable eukaryotic promoter (e.g., CMV) are cloned into commercially available lambda DNA cloning vectors; promising results have been obtained with phage lambda DNA vaccines directed against hepatitis B (Clark, Bartley, Jepson, Craik, & March, 2011;March et al, 2004) and Chlamydia abortis (Ou et al, 2013).…”

Characterization of Bacteriophages against Salmonella Gallinarum

“…박테리오파지(bacteriophage)는 세균에 특이적으로 감염할 수 있는 바이러스로서 물, 폐수, 토양 등으로부터 광범위하게 분리된다 (Criscuolo et al, 2017;Doss et al, 2017;Haq et al, 2012;Henry and Debarbieux, 2012). 세균에 감염한 파지(phage)는 두 가지 다른 life cycle 즉, lytic cycle과 lysogenic cycle 과정을 거칠 수 있다.…”