Phage Therapy: The Future of the Medical World
How the natural enemy of bacteria can change how bacterial infections are treated
For decades, antibiotics have been used for our medical needs, being used to treat things from the common cold to types of pneumonia. But with such common use of antibiotics, bacteria are developing an immunity to antibiotics, making some bacterial infections extremely difficult to treat. Although this may seem difficult to treat, the solution can be found in bacteria’s natural enemy, bacteriophages.
What are Bacteriophages?
Bacteriophages are viruses that feed off of specific bacteria. A phage would latch onto a bacterium and eject its DNA inside it. The DNA can replicate and create new phages causing the bacterium to burst (this is the lytic cycle). Another way this can occur is when the DNA of the phage is incorporated into the bacterium, and the bacterium goes through cell division with the phage DNA in it until it is introduced to stresses. After it is introduced to stresses, the bacterium goes through the phase of the lytic cycle when the phage DNA creates more phages inside the bacterium, causing it to burst (this process is the lysogenic cycle).
Each kind of bacteriophage only associates with a specific kind of bacterium. For example, a phage that affects E. coli bacteria won’t affect another type of bacteria. Despite this, phages can be genetically modified to affect another kind of bacteria. As of right now, bacteriophage use is mainly common in parts of Europe, which is one of the reasons why this medical wonder isn’t commonly used in the United States.
The History of Bacteriophages
Phages exist everywhere, and there are more phages in the world than any other organism. They were first utilized in the Soviet Union for soldiers. The main source the Soviet Union got their bacteriophage treatments from was the country Georgia, a country that is still utilizing phage therapy in hospitals today. The reason why bacteriophages were kept from the world was that phage therapy was classified info from the Soviet Union at the time. But when phage therapy was revealed to the western side of the world, the need wasn’t so urgent at the time due to the huge success of antibiotics. So, bacteriophage therapy was almost unnecessary until now.
The Need for Phages in the Future
Although antibiotics have been successful for decades, bacteria are developing what is called antibiotic resistance, making them superbugs. This occurs when bacteria can “resist” the effects of antibiotics designed to kill them. Resistance to antibiotics can be passed on to future generations of bacteria. Due to natural selection, the bacteria without antibiotic resistance die, and the ones with antibiotic resistance thrive and pass on the resistance to their offspring.
With the use of bacteriophages, superbugs with antibiotic resistance can be killed without any other natural or beneficial bacteria surrounding the treated area being affected. Bacteria have the ability to become immune to phages, but the process would take about one to two hundred years, and developing an immunity to phages would remove bacteria’s immunity to antibiotics. With the right sort of utilization, phages can be used as an alternative to not only superbugs but also for bacterial infections that need antibiotic treatment.
The Downsides of Bacteriophages
Although phage therapy and all its benefits are great, it does have some downsides.
- Types of bacteriophages are limited to only one kind of bacteria, so completely replacing antibiotics with phages would be difficult to do. Some phages may have to be genetically altered to attack specific bacteria, while on the other hand, antibiotics usually work on a broader spectrum.
- Bacteriophages would be difficult to prescribe, and physicians would need more training just to prescribe them. The shelf life of bacteriophages also varies depending on the type of bacteriophage.
- Bacteria can also be resistant to phages after one to two hundred years, which buys us time but doesn’t guarantee phages replacing antibiotics in the medical world forever.
Companies Using Phage Therapy
PhagoMed: PhagoMed is based in Austria, and uses phage cocktails, which is a mix of phages used to treat specific bacterial diseases, to try and replace antibiotics. They are in their preclinical development stage and are FDA approved.
Adaptive Phage Therapeutics: Adaptive Phage Therapeutics is a startup that is currently collaborating with Mayo Clinic, and has been funded by Hackensack Meridian Health. They have something called a Phage Bank, which is essentially a large library of phages. Their goal is to completely replace antibiotics with bacteriophage therapy.
TechnoPhage: TechnoPhage is currently trying to use phages to cure chronic ulcers and neurological and respiratory diseases. TechnoPhage is located in Lisbon and started in 2005. Their strategy is “based on developing new therapeutics from early discovery to clinical development, including in-house capacity for process development and GMP production”.
Although bacteriophage therapy has its hurdles, it could potentially be very impactful in the medical world. One day, phage therapy could even be used to treat bacterial infections that are usually treated by antibiotics with harmful side effects, like cancer. Bacteriophages have a ton of potential in the medical world, and one day will completely change the way that bacterial infections are approached.
