What Is Phage Therapy?

Bacteriophages are viruses that invade bacterial cells.

Phage therapy

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The invasion of these viruses can cause

Bacterial host-specific

In clinical applications, the host range of bacterial phage is generally narrower than that of antibiotics. A phage is generally only effective against a specific bacterium, or a specific strain of a bacterium. This limited host range is very beneficial for disease treatment. In principle, phage therapy has a much smaller adverse effect on the gastrointestinal flora and in vivo ecology than commonly used antibiotics, because the use of antibiotics usually affects the intestinal flora. And cause problems such as secondary infections of Clostridium. A potential disadvantage of clinical application is that the host range of most phage strains is narrow.

2. Better than antibiotics

Under certain conditions, phage therapy is very effective and has some unique advantages over antibiotics. Bacteria also develop resistance to phages, but developing new phages is much simpler than developing new antibiotics. It takes only a few weeks to get new phages, and many years to get new antibiotics. When bacteria develop resistance, related phages naturally change with them. When superbugs appeared, superphages had evolved with them. All we have to do is keep them in the same environment. The topical use of phage has particular advantages, as they penetrate more strongly and can reach all sites of bacterial infection, while the concentration of antibiotics decreases rapidly below the infected surface. Immediately after lysing a specific bacterial target, the phage stops reproducing. Therefore the phage does not develop secondary resistance similar to antibiotics. With more and more problems caused by resistant bacteria, and the lack of research and development of new antibiotics, the use of bacteriophages will be one of the choices to deal with bacterial infections. ^[2]

3. Potential advantages of phage therapy

1. Each type of phage attacks only a very limited number of bacteria, and almost specifically targets one kind of bacteria. Therefore, they can target specific pathogenic bacteria without affecting the normal flora of the host;

2. Phages are easy to grow and purify;

3. Bacteriophages are "living drugs" whose number will increase as the target bacterial population spreads, so they can be administered in small doses;

4. Bacteriophages are not toxic, they only infect bacteria and not human cells;

5. They are self-limiting. Once the target bacterial group is eliminated, their number will decrease sharply; but phages are an assembly of foreign proteins and nucleic acids. When administered through the blood circulation, they will cause an immune response, so they are mainly considered for Systemic infections such as wounds, abscesses, and infections of the gastrointestinal tract, skin, and lungs. ^[3]