The promise of phages Phage therapy is an exciting alternative to antibiotics. Why now?
have been developed to screen for mutants with expanded host ranges. Synthetic biology approaches can also be used to enhance bacterial killing by using a designed phage that includes an antimicrobial gene or protein. This is another area where advances in machine learning will lead to more efficient phage design.
Phage manufacturing also needs an overhaul to ensure these therapies become accessible to the public. For now, phage therapy is still experimental, and each case needs approval from the US Food and Drug Administration in a single-use Investigational New Drug application. To employ phage therapies, cases must be life-threatening and caused by multi-drug-resistant infections.
Challenges remain. Manufacturing and distributing phage therapy on a larger scale isn’t possible right now. Phages can multiply, and so treatment dosage needs to be carefully considered for any clinical trial. It’s important to note that bacteria’s job is to evolve — they have been doing this for eons, and not just in response to antibiotics.
It’s not likely that phage therapies will take the place of general antibiotic use, but hopefully as soon as they are shown to be broadly safe and clinically useful, they will be a much needed complement to the antibiotic armamentarium.
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