BACTERIOPHAGES: ANTI BACTERIAL GUARD DOGS

• For such tiny agents, viruses have taken a huge toll on humanity. Outbreaks of viral diseases, such as smallpox, influenza, HIV, and COVID-19 have killed billions and fundamentally shaped societies throughout human history
• But not all viruses are killers. As with bacteria, “good” or “friendly” viruses can also be beneficial for health.
• Scientists now talk of a virome  all the different types of viruses we host in our bodies which contribute to health, much like the bacterial microbiome
• This virome is huge. You have 380 trillion virus particles living (or existing) in or on your body right now  10 times more than the number of bacteria
•  These viruses lurk in our lungs and blood, live on our skin and linger inside the microbes in our guts
• They’re not all bad, however: There are viruses that kill cancer cells and help break down tumours, others that train our immune system and help them fight pathogens, and even some that control gene expression in pregnancy

• The vast majority of viruses inside us are bacteriophages  viruses that kill bacteria in our microbiomes
•  Bacteriophages, also known as phages, are harmless to human cells as they do not recognize them as their bacterial prey.
• They work by hunting down bacteria and attaching themselves to the surface of a bacterial cell, before injecting viral DNA material into the cell
• The viral DNA then replicates inside the bacteria, sometimes by borrowing the DNA replication hardware of the bacteria.
• Once enough new viruses have been created inside the bacterial cell, the cell then bursts to release the new viral particles
• All this takes just 30 minutes, meaning one virus can become many in a couple of hours
• The ability of phages to take down bacteria had scientists pondering whether they could be used to treat bacterial infections in the early 20th century, but when antibiotics like penicillin came along, that research faded away
• Antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria are now on the rise, with experts saying antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest medical challenges facing global communities
• As a result, scientists are racing to find new forms of antibiotic agents, putting phages back on the menu as agents to fight bacterial infections.

• Due to the scarcity of antibiotics in Soviet-era Russia, phages were used to treat bacterial infections, and their use has continued in countries like Georgia, Ukraine and Russia for decades
• Georgia is a hot spot for phage tourism, with patients from all over the world going there to be treated with phages
• It’s from these clinics that some scientists say we have good evidence that phages can work against infections that are resistant to conventional antibacterial agents.
• Georgia has developed into one of the global centers of phage therapy, hosting one of the largest therapeutic collections of bacteriophages in the world
• But countries like Belgium and the US are beginning to use phages for exceptional cases in specialized therapy centers as well.