Bacteriophage therapy

Bacteriophage (abbreviated phage) is a virus that attacks exclusively bacteria. It infects the bacterial cell and multiplies in it, after which hundreds of new virions leave the bacterium, which also kills it. Bacteriophages thus multiply exponentially at the site of infection. They do not have the ability to attack an eukaryotic cell (e.g. human)because the receptors on the surface of this cell to which the phages bind do not tell them anything (unlike the receptors on the surface of the bacterial cell, which they specifically recognize). Phages have been a natural part of the environment for hundreds of millions of years and you don´t mind. This can be used in therapy. Bacteriophage therapy is an alternative to failing antibiotics.

History of bacteriophage therapy
It all started with water from the Ganges. At the end of the 19th century, Ernest Hankin discovered that her water had antibacterial effects - specifically against Cholera. Not surprisingly, bacteriophages are abundant where their host is. Ten or fifteen years before Alexander Fleming discovered the bactericidal effects of fungi and gave the world its first antibiotic – penicilin (1928), Félix d´Hérelle and Fréderick Twort independently observed bacterial cultures at the site of bacterial lysis. D´Hérelle was convinced that it was a virus but for him then an invisible unit. He and his wife named him bacteriophage (bacterial eater). It was he who, for the first time, specifically tested bacteriophages for therapy. It was a boy suffering from dysentery caused by bacteria of the genus Shigella. Other species of bacteriophages specific for the treatment of plague or cholerahave been successful and isolated. Together with their Georgian colleague microbiologist Giorgem Eliavou they founded the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, which, among other things, dealt with phage treatment.



However, phagotherapy has entered the background due to the rocketing rise of antibiotics which are non-specific and therefore cover a whole range of diseases. In the beginning, it was considered a panacea. And yet a chemical is more attractive than a virus solution. bacteriophages remained in the eastern bloc with their center in Tbilisi. During World War II, they were used in combat camps to treat epidemics of cholera, gangrene, shigellosis. It was a financially very interesting and simple treatment. In the 1980s, they also began phagotherapy at the Academy of Sciences in Warsaw in Poland, successfully treating diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant strains. Although the results looked very positive, even miraculous, the then rigorous socialist scientific approach and isolation from the rest of the world did not allow for a more vigorous promotion of phagotherapy. Today, therapy is possible in two places - in Tbilisi (Georgia) and in Wroclaw (Poland) (experimental character). More and more scientists are starting to focus on bacteriophages and despite strict drug guidelines, some products such as antibacterial patches or bacteriophage wound dressings are also coming to us.

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Source

 * Will the era of antibiotics end, will they be replaced by bacteriophages?