The World Health Organisation has listed Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) as one of the greatest health threats facing humankind. Globally, AMR infections are associated with >4.9 million deaths per year, placing it as the third-leading cause of death, behind only heart disease and stroke. The therapeutic use of bacteriophages (phages), viruses that infect and kill bacteria, is emerging as an effective treatment against AMR infections. Phage therapy has been successfully used to treat patients across a broad range of pathologies, with substantial clinical improvement and bacterial eradication. To be an effective agent for the therapy, phages should have a broad host range, a minimum interaction with humans’ immune system, be free from antibiotic resistance and virulence genes, have a capacity to replicate efficiently on bacterial host and avoid the development of high-fitness resistance in the bacterial host.
Although the concept of phage therapy is not new, only a few clinical requests for phage therapy have been fulfilled successfully due to a lack of understanding of the biology of phage-host interactions, human immune response, abortive infections, restriction-modification of phage DNA and resistance development. For example, many commercially available phages are administered to the patients without the complete knowledge of how fast the bacteria develop resistance to the host and the factor affecting phage delivery to the site of infections. Molecular genetics of phages and their evolution within the host are equally important to predict the antimicrobial efficacy of phages. Further advances in this field have also shown that phage derived products (such as peptidoglycan hydrolases and capsular depolymerase) can counter several limitations of using whole phages.
This Research Topic will largely cover recent advances in bacteriophage therapy research, including but not limited to basic biology, molecular and immunological aspects, application of phage product in therapy, as well as clinical trials.
Here, we encourage authors to address the following topics:
• Immunological and molecular aspects of phages
• Computational biology and bioinformatics in bacteriophage research
• Phage-host interaction
• Clinical applications of phages and phage derived (engineered) products
The World Health Organisation has listed Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) as one of the greatest health threats facing humankind. Globally, AMR infections are associated with >4.9 million deaths per year, placing it as the third-leading cause of death, behind only heart disease and stroke. The therapeutic use of bacteriophages (phages), viruses that infect and kill bacteria, is emerging as an effective treatment against AMR infections. Phage therapy has been successfully used to treat patients across a broad range of pathologies, with substantial clinical improvement and bacterial eradication. To be an effective agent for the therapy, phages should have a broad host range, a minimum interaction with humans’ immune system, be free from antibiotic resistance and virulence genes, have a capacity to replicate efficiently on bacterial host and avoid the development of high-fitness resistance in the bacterial host.
Although the concept of phage therapy is not new, only a few clinical requests for phage therapy have been fulfilled successfully due to a lack of understanding of the biology of phage-host interactions, human immune response, abortive infections, restriction-modification of phage DNA and resistance development. For example, many commercially available phages are administered to the patients without the complete knowledge of how fast the bacteria develop resistance to the host and the factor affecting phage delivery to the site of infections. Molecular genetics of phages and their evolution within the host are equally important to predict the antimicrobial efficacy of phages. Further advances in this field have also shown that phage derived products (such as peptidoglycan hydrolases and capsular depolymerase) can counter several limitations of using whole phages.
This Research Topic will largely cover recent advances in bacteriophage therapy research, including but not limited to basic biology, molecular and immunological aspects, application of phage product in therapy, as well as clinical trials.
Here, we encourage authors to address the following topics:
• Immunological and molecular aspects of phages
• Computational biology and bioinformatics in bacteriophage research
• Phage-host interaction
• Clinical applications of phages and phage derived (engineered) products
