Bacteriophage Therapy  8-2003  (Source Unknown)
 

In response to the article in our last issue on a potential cancer serum made from a parasitic organism that afflicts rabbits, Scott Grady passed along the following information on bacteriophages, bacteria-eating viruses that could offer a remedy to the increasing threat of antibiotic resistance.

Bacteriophages (also called “phages”) were first discovered by Felix d’Herelle of the Pasteur Institute in France 1917. The word bacteriophage is derived from bacterium, plus the Greek phagein, meaning to eat.

Phages are extremely simple life forms consisting only of a head made of DNA and spidery legs that grab bacterium. Phages inject DNA into bacteria causing rapid reproduction of phages within the bacteria. The bacteria explodes spreading hundreds of new phages into the infected area. Thus the bacteria is destroyed with minimal side effects to the host organism.

With the introduction and subsequent overwhelming success of antibiotics, the potential of phage therapy has never been fully researched in the West. It is only now with increasing concerns about antibiotic resistance due to overuse that this innovative treatment is being given serious consideration in the United States. Phage therapy has been utilized in Eastern Europe and Russia for decades with notable success in cases involving infection, particularly Staphylococcus aureus bacteria (“staph”) infections that are so common in hospital settings. Elizabeth Kutter, director bacteriophage research at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington has observed that, “They basically don’t cut off feet because of diabetic ulcers in Georgia because their staph phage works so well.” Kutter reports remarkable improvement in at least two patients with seemingly untreatable infections who traveled to the Tblisi clinic in the Republic of Georgia for treatment.

 

In contrast to the general efficacy of an antibiotic that may work for many different infectious agents, a phage is specific for a specific strain of bacteria. For example, a specific phage may attack Streptococcus pneumoniae (the most common type of pneumonia) but not the other twenty-seven strains of the infection. A possible solution is to make a “cocktail” consisting of several phages, an unproven approach to the specificity issue.