Scientists are searching for bacteriophages, viruses that kill bacteria, to combat the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Phages, found everywhere on Earth, offer a promising new line of defense against superbugs that are resistant to most antibiotics.
Antimicrobial resistance threatens many of the gains of modern medicine, making even routine surgery much riskier. Some scientists believe phages, lurking in every corner of the planet, offer hope
By the 1960s, scientists and researchers realised our chemical weapons could misfire – disease-causing microbes evolved better defences, swapping and changing elements of their DNA to improve their own survival. Like all viruses, bacteriophages are a simple arrangement of proteins and genetic material, an unthinking sort-of-life with a single goal – to replicate. Bacteriophages come in many forms. Under powerful electron microscopes, some look like delicate dandelions. Others appear as alien moon landers with a boxy, 20-sided head and spindly legs.
In part, that’s because development of new antibiotics has largely stalled over the last 50 years. Even with new classes of antimicrobials under investigation, it can take years to get through rigorous clinical trials and into patients. Mostly, it’s a problem of economics. “When they happen, they’re terrifying,” she says. “Any clinician you speak to has had cases where we’ve had absolutely no options.”A blood agar plate showing colonies of bacteria after a student coughed into his hand and pressed it into the plate.Steffanie Strathdee, an infectious diseases epidemiologist at the University of California San Diego, understands the fear of AMR all too well. Her husband, Tom Patterson, became ill while holidaying in Egypt in 2015.
There are advantages to using phages compared to traditional antibiotics, according to those advocating for their increased use. First, they act very specifically on bacteria and do not attack human cells. That also means they aren’t as disruptive to our microbiome – the collection of microbes that live within and upon us – as antibiotics.
Today, with the threat of AMR bearing down on public health, there are more than 90 clinical trials under way across the world to establish the safety and efficacy of phage therapy. They’re assessing patients with chronic UTIs, cystic fibrosis, diabetic foot infections and bacteremia caused by all manner of multiresistant pathogens.Stamp is not testing if phage X can destroy bacteria Y.
ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE BACTERIOPHAGES SUPERBUGS AMR PHAGES
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