Phage Therapy

Phage therapy is the use of bacteriophages (usually purely lytic) to treat pathogenic bacterial infections. Phages are viruses that invade only bacterial cells and, in the case of lytic phages, cause the bacterium to burst and die, thus releasing more phages. Phage therapy is a potential alternative to antibiotics, being developed for clinical use in the 21st century by many research groups in Europe and the US. After having been extensively used and developed mainly in former Soviet Union countries for about 90 years, phage therapy is now becoming more available in other countries such as USA for a variety of bacterial infections.Phage therapy has many applications in human medicine as well as dentistry, veterinary science and agriculture.

An important benefit of phage therapy is that bacteriophages are usually more specific than common drugs, so one can be chosen to be harmless to not only the host organism (YOU), but also other beneficial bacteria, such as gut flora, reducing chance for opportunistic infections. They also have no known side effects as opposed to drugs, and do not appear to stress the liver or immune system. Because they replicate inside the pathogen, a single, small dose is usually sufficient.

Phages are currently being used therapeutically to treat bacterial infections that do not respond well to conventional antibiotics. They tend to be more successful where there is a biofilm covered by a polysaccharide layer, that antibiotics typically cannot penetrate.

The origins of phage therapy can be traced to the origins of the discovery of phages themselves. Felix d'Herelle discovered and implemented phages as therapeutic agents back in the 1920s. His story is fantastic and should be known by all microbiologists. Read more about him here Felix d`Herelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology