Here is an update with one of our more recent papers, a followup on the 2016 Patterson case intervention.  This was described in a 2017 paper, but at the time there was little information on the phages used or the pathogen strain.  A paper published earlier this year in Nature Communications follows up on this, describing the phages, pathogen and their evolution during treatment.  The gist of the study is that all of the first-line phages used were closely related, and that this is probably why bacterial resistance to the treatment emerged so quickly, as soon as a few days after the start of treatment.  Exactly why the treatment seemed to work is still not clear; it could be that the phage caused an initial reduction in bacterial load that could then be dealt with by the immune system, or that the remaining phage-resistant mutants were somehow less virulent, or a combination of these factors.

The Nat Comms paper is available here, and is also covered in this Nature Community blog post, which has a bit more background.

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Novartis joins the Big Pharma exodus out of antibiotics, dumping research, cutting 140 and out-licensing programs

The post Novartis joins the Big Pharma exodus out of antibiotics | Endpoints News appeared first on Gill Lab.

Image from Wellcome Images

With microbial resistance to antibiotics growing into a major global health crisis, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, in collaboration with national research institutions and private industry, are leveraging hard-won expertise to exploit a natural viral enemy of pathogenic bacteria, creating North America’s first Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH).

UCSD press release announcing IPATH

IPATH website

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Fighting infection with phages (image courtesy NIH)

Antimicrobial resistance is a serious threat to modern medicine: As MRSA and other bacteria become immune to our most common antibiotics, researchers must develop new ways to fight these pathogens. One of these alternatives actually involves viruses called bacteriophages, which prey on bacteria. Though bacteriophages (or “phages” for short) are not currently approved for widespread human use within the United States, they are being used under Emergency Investigative New Drug FDA clearance and could one day be used in conjunction with antibiotics to treat the most stubborn bacterial infections.

Link to webpage and video

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High in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Spain, an international team of researchers set out four buckets to gather a shower of viruses falling from the sky.

Scientists have surmised there is a stream of viruses circling the planet, above the planet’s weather systems but below the level of airline travel. Very little is known about this realm, and that’s why the number of deposited viruses stunned the team in Spain. Each day, they calculated, some 800 million viruses cascade onto every square meter of the planet.

Most of the globe-trotting viruses are swept into the air by sea spray, and lesser numbers arrive in dust storms.

“Unimpeded by friction with the surface of the Earth, you can travel great distances, and so intercontinental travel is quite easy” for viruses, said Curtis Suttle, a marine virologist at the University of British Columbia. “It wouldn’t be unusual to find things swept up in Africa being deposited in North America.”

The post Trillions Upon Trillions of Viruses Fall From the Sky Each Day | NYT appeared first on Gill Lab.

To the average social-media user, the tweet might as well have been written in another language, but to those who know Strathdee, it was a rallying cry. Strathdee is the associate dean of global health science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and she’s part of a small but growing community of scientists advocating for an experimental treatment for superbug infections. The treatment, called phage therapy, uses bacteriophages, which are tiny viruses that appear to have an uncanny ability to destroy some of the most lethal strains of drug-resistant bacteria.

The post Superbugs Are Nearly Impossible to Fight. This Last-Resort Medical Treatment Offers Hope | Time Magazine appeared first on Gill Lab.

Bacteriophages, which are bacteria-killing viruses, succeeded where antibiotics failed.

Source: This man should have died, but unusual infusions saved his life – The Washington Post

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Bacteriophages — viruses found in soil, water and human waste — may be the cure in a post-antibiotic world.

Source: Sewage Saved This Man’s Life. Someday It Could Save Yours. | HuffPost

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Phage therapy to combat bacterial infections is garnering attention for the second time in 100 years, but solid clinical support for its widespread use is still lacking.

Source: Viral Soldiers | The Scientist Magazine®

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