Bacteriophage

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Oodain
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03 May 2011, 8:50 am

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would these be usefull as targeted antibiotics?

could it provide an answer to drug resistant bacteria?

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03 May 2011, 10:12 am

Hmm... I remember learning about this in bio class. They only infect bacteria, so I think they may be useful for curing certain bacterial diseases. I'm not so sure about drug-resistant bacteria, though, because the bacteriophage has to "recognize" the bacteria based on unique binding sites on the bacteria, and if those sites are altered due to a drug resistance mutation, then the bacteriophage might not be able to recognize the drug-resistant bacteria. My thoughts though.

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Oodain
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03 May 2011, 10:17 am

cool, i have little knowledge of biochem, i just found the subject interesting

hmm but if they really do bind only to specific bacteria then i guess treatment could become difficult (unless a biopsy is taken or something like that)

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Vigilans
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03 May 2011, 1:38 pm

Bacteriophage therapy was big in the USSR if I'm not mistaken. I think there is a lot of promise in it, if more research is done, as drug-resistant bacteria are becoming a real problem

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Albirea
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03 May 2011, 2:32 pm

Oodain wrote:

cool, i have little knowledge of biochem, i just found the subject interesting

hmm but if they really do bind only to specific bacteria then i guess treatment could become difficult (unless a biopsy is taken or something like that)

Yes, for example, the T4 bacteriophage infects only E. coli bacteria (as far as I know).
They'd have to do a lot more research and testing (which just might not be that hard) for bacteriophages to become effective medicine.

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ryan93
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04 May 2011, 2:38 am

Phage treatment, Like microRNA's, seems to be one of those promising ideas that has flopped a little. I do think that ultimately we need a treatment that evolves to cure a pathogen that evolves, so I'd like to see more done about phage treatments.

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ruveyn
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04 May 2011, 3:48 am

How does one assure that the virus used to kill a specific type of bacteria does not mutate and start killing the patient?

ruveyn

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04 May 2011, 4:07 am

ruveyn wrote:

How does one assure that the virus used to kill a specific type of bacteria does not mutate and start killing the patient?

ruveyn

You'd want to use a phage with a lower mutation rate, but in any case I imagine that human and bacterial biochemistry is sufficiently different so that no phage would suddenly jump from one to the other. There's probably more than a different receptor stopping them infecting humans.

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ruveyn
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04 May 2011, 4:12 am

ryan93 wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

How does one assure that the virus used to kill a specific type of bacteria does not mutate and start killing the patient?

ruveyn

Slight change of question. How does one make sure the phage does not start to kill beneficial bacteria such as grow in the gut and help to digest food?

ruveyn

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04 May 2011, 4:26 am

Quote:

Slight change of question. How does one make sure the phage does not start to kill beneficial bacteria such as grow in the gut and help to digest food?

ruveyn

That would be a problem. I'm not an expert in virology or anything, but I guess you'd want to avoid things like the T4 phage (E.coli killer). Again, we would be dealing with a very low chance of a "beneficial" mutation for any virus, and I imagine different bacteria are genetically distant enough to make a leap very, very unlikely. If the gut flora was killed, it probably wouldn't be lethal, although I imagine it would be unpleasant. You would likely be recolonised (excuse the pun

), although the flora balance might be a little messed up. Beats getting TB or MRSA though.

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ryan93
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04 May 2011, 4:36 am

Albirea wrote:

You would definitely get "phage-resistant bacteria". The difference between antibiotics and phage, is that phage can evolve. The phage-resistant strain of bacteria could be taken from the host, high concentrations of phage could be added, and the phage might mutate to kill the resistant bacteria. Radio label the bacterial growth medium, so that any phage created by the dying bacteria (i.e, the mutated, phage killer) can be easily found, isolated and sequenced

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Dantac
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04 May 2011, 9:43 am

Vigilans wrote:

Bacteriophage therapy was big in the USSR if I'm not mistaken. I think there is a lot of promise in it, if more research is done, as drug-resistant bacteria are becoming a real problem

It still is practiced widely in the ex-USSR nations. There was a documentary a while ago that showed how different their medical practices were compared to the Euro/US medical systems.

They showed the process that a US and UK person go through when being treated in hospitals... they showed the sterile, ultra-clean hospital environment and the clean-obsessive culture of the nurses and doctors and laws governing their work. Treatments were quite expensive, labor intensive and the results were not very good (long time to cure the person, long recovery time, etc).

And what a person in this ex-ussr country went through. This other person went to a clinic that was visibly low-tech and while not being filthy it was certainly not sterile clean as you'd expect the place to be. The people that came in with infections and such underwent a procedure that took a sample of their blood or whatever fluid/tissue that was under infection... then was sent home and told to come back in 2 days and given some aspirin. In the clinic they grew the infection in petri dishes then custom-created a bacteriophage... weakened it a bit and when the person came back they were injected with that stuff.

The person was then sent home and told to rest.. and was cured in a matter of hours. Quite remarkable.

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04 May 2011, 10:42 am

Dantac wrote:

The person was then sent home and told to rest.. and was cured in a matter of hours. Quite remarkable.

That is what the person was told. But was he really cured. How much follow work was done to establish this factually.

Hint: Check out the expected life span for people in the ex-Soviet Union. It is remarkably low for a modern industrialized nation.

ruveyn

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04 May 2011, 5:16 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Dantac wrote:

The person was then sent home and told to rest.. and was cured in a matter of hours. Quite remarkable.

IIRC Russia has one of the highest TB rates of any Industrialised Nations, so if they had good phage treatment you would imagine infectious disease deaths would be lower.

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Albirea
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04 May 2011, 6:20 pm

ryan93 wrote:

Albirea wrote:

That's true, I've never thought of that. Yes, while the antibiotic is a simple chemical, phages can change their genetic sequences with environmental change (although viruses aren't really considered "life"). There would have to be more testing, and there needs to be a way to get the phage genes to stay constant over time. That would be the challenge.

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Oodain
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04 May 2011, 6:51 pm

ryan93 wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

Dantac wrote:

The person was then sent home and told to rest.. and was cured in a matter of hours. Quite remarkable.

IIRC Russia has one of the highest TB rates of any Industrialised Nations, so if they had good phage treatment you would imagine infectious disease deaths would be lower.

not saying i disagree at all here*edit*(with the sentiment that it might not work), but given that they(bacteriophages) are pretty specific it isnt a certainty there is an effective treatment for the bacteria responisble, while there may be for others.
also with the population of russia and the economic turmoil since ww2 i have no idea how much of the population have ready access to treatment.

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