Phage Therapy- A new hope in flighting AMR?

A bacteriophage is a virus that kills bacteria. There are more phages on earth than every other organism combined, including bacteria. Where there is a bacteria, there is a phage. Not only is a phage the most abundant entity on the planet, but also the deadliest- phages are capable of causing a trillion successful infections per second.

So why have these ultramicroscopic particles caught the interests of scientists worldwide? Its because we've got a problem-

Bacteria are no longer responding to some of our traditional antibiotic therapies. Multi drug resistant and extensively drug resistant strains are getting rampant and are especially a nuisance in case of nosocomial or hospital-acquired infections. Such strains are known as superbugs.

So how do we combat this?

There is a hopeful solution: Injection of bacteria-specific bacteriophages for selective killing of the pathogen. So specific, in fact, that it does not cause any harm even to other good bacteria such as those residing in our gut. It enters and colonises the susceptible bacterial cell host before finally lysing it to release more virus particles.

But wont bacteria also evolve resistance against phages too?.

Well, phages evolve too. This makes phages smart weapons that are constantly getting better at killing. Further, studies have shown that for a bacteria to become even mildly resistant to a phage, it has to give up its antibiotic resistance. Some strains were found to have lost vital surface structures that were responsible for its virulence in the first place. This makes phage therapy quite promising.

In 2016, the largest phage clinical trial began and phages are getting more and more attention. Though injecting viruses into the body might seem like a weird concept for few, it could save millions of lives.