Henry Stevens
Bacteriophages are a type of naturally occurring virus that infects and kills all different
types of bacteria. Many bacteriophages, or phages as they are commonly called, are super
selective in what types of bacteria they will infect so they will only infect one specific type of
bacteria. Once the phage finds its target bacteria, the phage will infect the bacteria and then
hijack the bacteria's inner machinery and reprogram it to create more phages and release them into the surrounding area to infect more bacteria. After highjacking the bacteria and using it to create more phages, some phages will make the bacteria cell “self-destruct” and send out a burst of phages to search for more bacteria to infect. Because phages infect only bacterial cells and not regular healthy human cells, they are being researched as a possible treatment for bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotics.
This paper follows the case of a 15-year-old patient with cystic fibrosis who developed an
antibiotic-resistant infection following a lung transplant. After the antibiotics failed to treat the
infection, doctors found two phages that infect and kill only the bacteria that the patient was
infected with and then used bioengineering to create a third phage that would help kill the
bacteria. After starting the treatment the patient saw improved symptoms after 9 days and his
infection began to go away.
Bacteriophages are a very promising alternative to antibiotics because they have the
ability to kill bacteria without harming any of the healthy bacteria in our body or our own cells.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming a large issue as more antibiotic-resistant bacteria
continue to pop up all over the world which has led scientists to look for alternative ways to kill bacteria.
References:
Dedrick RM, Guerrero-Bustamante CA, Garlena RA, et al. Engineered bacteriophages for treatment of a patient with a disseminated drug-resistant Mycobacterium abscessus. Nat Med. 2019;25(5):730-733. doi:10.1038/s41591-019-0437-z
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