One Vigilant Bacteriophage of All

Phages. They have existed since the time of the dinosaurs. Perhaps even much before that. When the creation of life was at its most primitive stages. Tiny, abundantly present, distinctly microscopic beings that can alter the bacterial genetic coding of life, altering the structural genomic sequence, commanding the bacterial life forms to commit suicide or make copies of phages within the bacterium or create an invasive destructive species of bacteria that can harm mankind at its finest. We, now take you to the wonderful world of phages, what they can do and their history of treating deadly bacterial infections since time immemorial.

It starts with the Soviet Union this was before the discovery of accurately the acceptance of penicillin as a drug treatment for bacteria, phages were part of a treatment known as ‘phage therapy’ this was essential and the only treatment available for the time of war that produced many wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Georgia took the concept and also run many hospitals and treatment facilities that provide vials of phages to many patients suffering from incurable ailments. The USSR specialised in procurement of different phages. You must be wondering what phage therapy is; it’s based on the phage’s ability to destruct a bacterium, this depends on what type of organism the phage can target, as a phage can alter the bacterium’s DNA. This principle and the fact that phages can be found abundantly almost makes it cost-effective treatment, and it can be from sewers, lakes, and even salt water. There are bacterial infections caused by multi-drug resistant bacteria, phages can be an alternative answer! Watson was a PhD student on ‘phage genetics’ he wanted to know the mechanisms that enable the phage to carry out the processes but the structure of the DNA was yet to be hypothesised and proven to explain this. The phages are what brought the DNA knowledge to man. There’s almost every phage to one particular bacterium in our Earth’s ecosystem. Phage therapy consists of flooding the infected body part or supplying it via an iv to the person to destroy/kill the harmful sepsis-causing bacteria from the body; the required phages would have its regular genetic sequence as well as its prodrome have matching sequences to that of the bacterium for it to be qualified enough to be accepted for phage therapy. This genetic transfer between organisms takes place about 20 million billion times per second. It lacks sufficient clinical trials making it fall under the category of naturopathic treatments but it was constantly used in the battlefield by the Soviet Union. America did try to re-create this technology in the laboratory but there were phages from different sub-classes so this made it difficult to patent as a medicine. Penicillin slowly sealed the cracks of the fallen economy of the Western Europe and this made Eastern Europe fall behind. The concept of phages is credited to two people Felix d’Herelle for the techniques of containing bacteriophage and to Eliava for the discovery of it as a treatment from the Russians.

There’s a lot of phage hunting going on for many potential treatments can be made possible! You can name your own phages, take them from any source, and their mechanisms are closely observed and studied on! T1-T7 are one of the most extensively studied phages in the human existence! ‘Shotgun Metagenomics’ is the process involving chemically isolating all the viral DNA in a given sample and isolating it together, using computer analysis to estimate which of the DNA sequences in there represent unique viral species. For now, patients are still coming to the Eliava Institute in Georgia from countries all across the world, and the institute is still struggling to find the funds to modernise their facilities. In the wild, phages can successfully eradicate their host’s populations. CTX φ, a filamentous phage, is notorious for replicating inside its host (Vibrio cholerae) inducing a deadly strain responsible for millions of deaths!

AI and deep-learning platforms can predict what host the phage will infect based on its DNA. Today, there’s still clinics all over Europe catering to the ‘phage therapy’ treatment!

Phage Therapy is key to solving global burden of AMR!