The Use of Bacteriophages in Veterinary Therapy

Abstract

There is a long history of using phage to treat infections in animals; the first examples of which occurred soon after the discovery of phage by Twort and d’Herelle over a century ago. Many of the earlier phage therapy experiments in animals focused on either demonstrating the efficacy of this approach for treating animal diseases directly (e.g., fowl typhoid) and/or using animals as models of human disease (e.g., plague, meningitis, dysentery), to varying degrees of success. The pioneering work of Williams Smith and colleagues in this field in the 1980s spearheaded a revival of phage therapy investigations in the West which has continued to gather pace to the present day. The majority of recent phage therapy trials in animals have focused on farm/food animals rather than companion animals, primarily because of economic, regulatory, and logistical reasons. Technological advancements in the biosciences in areas such as genetics, immunology, and computational biology have allowed further refinement of phage therapy experiments in animals, particularly with respect to selection of effective candidates for therapeutic trials. The use of phage to treat animal diseases is yet to be widespread, even in countries such as the United States, where phage products have been approved for this purpose. However, the growth of antimicrobial resistance in both human and animal pathogens may yet overcome barriers to using them more extensively.