Reinventing the fight against bacteria, one phage at a time.

Post-War Stagnation and Phage Therapy’s Marginalization in the West (1945–1980s) The period following World War II marked a decisive turning point in the trajectory of phage therapy in Western medicine. Despite the promising results bacteriophages had demonstrated prior to the war as potential antibacterial agents, the decades after 1945 saw a dramatic decline in interest, funding, and scientific engagement with phage therapy in the United States and much of Western Europe. This marginalization can be attributed to a confluence of scientific, sociopolitical, and economic factors that reshaped the landscape of infectious disease treatment and research. Artistic View One of the key contributors to this decline was the overwhelming optimism surrounding the newly discovered class of antibiotics. The post-war pharmaceutical revolution brought forward a series of broad-spectrum antibiotics such as streptomycin, tetracycline, and chloramphenicol, which were viewed as miracle drugs capable o...

  It's time for the human gut's "virome" to take centre stage, not the microbiome. According to studies, certain phages convey damaging genes and encourage biofilms, which directly affect cancer risk. Research on gut health was dominated for years by microorganisms. The gut virome is now being recognised as a key factor in both health and illness. Approximately 90% of the gut virome is composed of bacteriophages, which are viruses that infect bacteria. They are up to ten times more numerous than bacteria, although they have a smaller biomass. These microscopic viruses impact gut health, immunity, and microbial communities. According to a groundbreaking research that was just published in Precision Clinical Medicine, the gut virome is linked to conditions like Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), colorectal cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The virome of the gut varies with life phases. Throughout life, the gut virome is always changing. Gut bacteriophage...

Study Advances Understanding of Immune System’s Crucial Role in Phage Therapy A new study co-authored by University of Maryland biologist Joshua Weitz assessed the potential for phage therapy to help treat antibiotic-resistant pneumonia. As antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” make infections trickier to treat, some in the medical community are turning to bacteriophages for backup. Also known as phages, these viruses exclusively target bacteria, allowing them to tackle bacterial infections when introduced to a patient’s body.  Phages (green) are shown engulfed by alveolar macrophages (cytoskeleton in pink and nucleus in blue). Image courtesy of Laurent Debarbieux and Solène Ecomard of the Institut Pasteur. While the use of phage therapy as an alternative or complementary treatment to antibiotics is growing, much is still unknown about how these viruses interact with bacteria and the immune system. A new study jointly led by the teams of  Joshua Weitz  at the University o...

The Paradox of Rapid Adaptation in Double-Stranded DNA Phages Despite Low Mutation Rates The evolutionary arms race between bacteriophages and their bacterial hosts has long fascinated microbiologists due to the remarkable speed at which phages can adapt to bacterial defenses. Double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) phages, in particular, present an intriguing paradox. Unlike many RNA viruses and single-stranded DNA viruses characterized by notoriously high mutation rates, dsDNA phages typically exhibit relatively low mutation rates—on the order of 10⁻⁸ to 10⁻⁶ mutations per nucleotide per replication cycle—comparable to or only slightly higher than their bacterial hosts. Yet, despite these low per-nucleotide mutation rates, dsDNA phages demonstrate an extraordinary capacity to rapidly adapt and evolve in response to bacterial countermeasures. This review explores the mechanisms underpinning this rapid evolutionary adaptability, with a focus on population dynamics, genomic architecture, recombina...

Researchers enlist the public as citizen scientists at national exhibition Investigating bacterial samples taken from cystic fibrosis patients Researchers at the University of Southampton are asking the public to become citizen scientists in the fight against antibiotic resistance. At the  Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition  , which opens to the public on Wednesday 2 July in London, visitors will be invited to help find phages – tiny viruses that could be key to combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR). At their exhibit, the Southampton scientists will ask people to collect and send water samples from their homes, local parks or rivers, or even their toilets. These samples will be analysed by researchers on the hunt for phages that could help fight resistant bacterial infections. The World Health Organization identifies AMR as one of the top global public health threats, estimated in 20221 to be directly responsible for over one million global deaths per year, and contrib...

I found a bacteria-eating virus in my loo - could it save your life? BBC I'm on the hunt for a microbial saviour – a type of virus that can treat infections rather than cause them. We all know the viral bad guys – Covid, flu, norovirus, herpes, chicken pox, measles… the list goes on. But there's a type of virus that's not interested in infiltrating our bodies, instead it preys on bacteria. They're known as bacteria eaters, or bacteriophage, or commonly as phage. Capturing them could give us new ways of treating infections, including superbugs that are becoming incurable. So, how to catch a killer? I've been promised it's surprisingly easy. The team at the  Phage Collection Project  sent me some vials to collect samples, along with a pair of gloves. All I need to do is hunt for some dirty water, the dirtier the better, dip the vials in and screw on the lid. I collected my first sample from an old bucket I've turned into a pond I tried a couple of ponds, the j...