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Phage Therapy

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Biotherapy - History, Principles and Practice

Abstract

Phage therapy is the use of bacteriophages – viruses that can only infect bacteria – to treat bacterial infections. In some parts of the world, phages have been used therapeutically since the 1930s.

Phage therapy was first developed at the Pasteur Institute in Paris early in the twentieth century and soon spread through Europe, the US, the Soviet Union and other parts of the world, but with mixed success. Since the advent of chemical antibiotics in the 1940s, it has been largely ignored in the West, while still being used to varying degrees in some countries, with major claims of success. Today, however, the resurgence of bacteria that are resistant to most or all available antibiotics is precipitating a major health crisis, and interest is growing in the potential use of phage to complement antibiotics as a way to fight infection. This chapter has been written to put phage therapy into historical and ecological perspective and to briefly explore the very interesting early research in France, the US and Eastern Europe as well as growing recent studies worldwide. Here, we discuss the nature of phage and the mechanisms of phage infection of bacteria, examine an existing body of research indicating the potential for a widespread application of phage use as treatment and prevention of various pathologies and present details of specific clinical phage applications. Phages specific for virtually every well-studied bacterial species have now been isolated and characterized. It has become clear that phages play the major role in maintaining the bacterial balance throughout nature; for example, at any given time a substantial fraction of the bacteria in the oceans are infected with replicating phage, which are thus key in the cycling of nutrients as well as in preventing overgrowth by any particular bacterial species. The reported results of early phage therapy work worldwide and of more recent French and Eastern European therapeutic phage applications are very encouraging in terms of such factors as lack of side effects and interactions with other medications as well as of efficacy, particularly as our understanding of phage biology and ecology has grown enormously. However, since most clinical application reports involved individualized applications to infections recalcitrant to all other available treatments rather than the double-blind clinical trials so prized by Western medicine, they have often been disregarded.

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Acknowledgments

We especially appreciate the efforts of Drs Liana Gachechiladze, Amiran Meipariani, Nino Chanishvili, Mzia Kutateladze, Rezo Adamia, Ramaz Katsarava and their colleagues in Tbilisi and of Beata Weber-Dabrowski, Andre Gorski, and others in Wroclaw to further develop phage therapy and help us understand the extensive therapeutic work carried out there. We express our thanks also to the many phage biologists and health-care personnel now working to bring phage therapy back into the Western World.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. PhageBiotics and the Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, USA

    Elizabeth M. Kutter Ph.D.

  2. Department of General Surgery, Tbilisi State Medical University, 33 Vaja-Pshavela Avenue, Tbilisi, 0160, Georgia

    Guram Gvasalia M.D.

  3. LTD Bacteriophage Production Facility, Gotua Str 3, Tbilisi, 0160, Georgia

    Zemphira Alavidze

  4. Research Associate, Bacteriophage Lab, Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA, 98505, USA

    Erin Brewster

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  1. Elizabeth M. Kutter Ph.D.
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  2. Guram Gvasalia M.D.
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  3. Zemphira Alavidze
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  4. Erin Brewster
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elizabeth M. Kutter Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. and Semmelweis Clinic, Institute of Pathology and Microbiology, Rudolfstiftung Hospital, Juchgasse 25, Vienna, 1030, Austria

    Martin Grassberger

  2. & Research Foundation, BioTherapeutics, Education, Urey Court 36, Irvine, 92617, California, USA

    Ronald A. Sherman

  3. , Preclinic Dentistry and Physiotherapy, Perm State Academy of Medicine, Revolution Street 4-135, Perm, 614007, Russia

    Olga S. Gileva

  4. , Graduate School of Integrated Medicine, CHA University, Yatapdong, Bundanggu 222, Seongnam, Gyeongghido, 463-836, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)

    Christopher M.H. Kim

  5. Hadassah Medical School, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Hebrew University -, P.O. Box 12272, Jerusalem, 91120, Israel

    Kosta Y. Mumcuoglu

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Kutter, E.M., Gvasalia, G., Alavidze, Z., Brewster, E. (2013). Phage Therapy. In: Grassberger, M., Sherman, R., Gileva, O., Kim, C., Mumcuoglu, K. (eds) Biotherapy - History, Principles and Practice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6585-6_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6585-6_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

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  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-6585-6

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