Category: Latest News

Detection of Salmonella Typhi bacteriophages in surface waters as a scalable approach to environmental surveillance

Posted on by Targeting Phage Therapy
Environmental surveillance, using detection of Salmonella Typhi DNA, has emerged as a potentially useful tool to identify typhoid-endemic settings; however, it is relatively costly and requires molecular diagnostic capacity. Shrestha et al. sought to determine whether S. Typhi bacteriophages are abundant in water sources in a typhoid-endemic setting, using low-cost assays. They collected drinking and surface…

Environmental Bacteriophages for Typhoid Surveillance and Evaluating Vaccine Impact

Posted on by Targeting Phage Therapy
Typhoid-conjugate vaccines (TCVs) provide an opportunity to reduce the burden of typhoid fever, caused by Salmonella Typhi, in endemic areas. As policymakers design vaccination strategies, accurate and high-resolution data on disease burden is crucial. However, traditional blood culture-based surveillance is resource-extensive, prohibiting its large-scale and sustainable implementation.  Salmonella Typhi is a water-borne pathogen, and here, Hooda et al.…

AP-PA02 Phage cocktail safely lowers P. aeruginosa load in Cystic Fibrosis trial

Posted on by Targeting Phage Therapy
  AP-PA02, an experimental phage therapy for people with cystic fibrosis (CF) and chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa respiratory infections, was well tolerated and reduced the bacterial load in the lungs, according to top-line results from a Phase 1b/2a trial. High doses of AP-PA02 were associated with durable reductions in bacterial load in the SWARM-Pa study. Pharmacokinetics data, which refers to the movement of…

Compassionate Use of Phages Against Drug-Resistant Mycobacterial Disease

Posted on by Targeting Phage Therapy
“Phage” by Professor Graham Beards is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Nontuberculous Mycobacterium infections, particularly Mycobacterium abscessus, are increasingly common among patients with cystic fibrosis and chronic bronchiectatic lung diseases. Treatment is challenging due to intrinsic antibiotic resistance. Bacteriophage therapy represents a potentially novel approach. Relatively few active lytic phages are available and there is great variation in phage susceptibilities among M.…

Tail-Engineered Phage P2 for Antimicrobials Delivery

Posted on by Targeting Phage Therapy
    Bacteriophages can be reprogrammed to deliver antimicrobials for therapeutic and biocontrol purposes and are a promising alternative treatment to antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. Fa-arun et al. developed a bacteriophage P4 cosmid system for the delivery of a Cas9 antimicrobial into clinically relevant human gut pathogens Shigella flexneri and Escherichia coli O157:H7.  Their P4 cosmid design…

Potential for Bacteriophages as Anticancer Agents

Posted on by Targeting Phage Therapy
Press release written by Dr. Swapnil Ganesh Sanmukh. Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with prostate cancer (PCa) being the leading cause of death among men globally. As components of the microbiome, including bacteriophages, are considered relevant concerning the diagnostics and therapeutics of malignant diseases, new interest has emerged to identify their…

Phage trial to treat CF patients with multi-drug resistant bacterial infections

Posted on by Targeting Phage Therapy
A false-color micrograph depicts phages attacking a bacterium. Thomas Deerinck, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging, UC San Diego Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an inherited disorder that causes severe damage to the lungs and other organs in the body. Nearly 40,000 children and adults in the United States live with CF, an often difficult existence…

NIH-supported clinical trial of phage therapy for cystic fibrosis begins

Posted on by Targeting Phage Therapy
This digitally-colorized scanning electron microscopic (SEM) image shows a number of rod-shaped Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria Enrollment has begun in an early-stage clinical trial evaluating bacteriophage therapy in adults with cystic fibrosis (CF) who carry Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) in their lungs. The trial is evaluating whether the bacteriophage, or “phage,” therapy is safe and able to reduce…

A novel virulent Litunavirus phage against multidrug resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Posted on by Targeting Phage Therapy
Transmission electron micrographs of phage VL1 negatively stained with 2% (w/v) uranyl acetate. The scale bar represents 200 nm. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a notable nosocomial pathogen that can cause severe infections in humans and animals. The emergence of multidrug resistant (MDR) P. aeruginosa has motivated the development of phages to treat the infections. Lerdsittikul et al.…