Phage cocktails and the future of phage therapy.

By B. Chan, S. Abedon, C. Loc-Carrillo. Future Microbiology, 2013

834 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Viruses of bacteria, known as bacteriophages or phages, were discovered nearly 100 years ago. Their potential as antibacterial agents was appreciated almost immediately, with the first 'phage therapy' trials predating Fleming's discovery of penicillin by approximately a decade. In this review, we consider phage therapy that can be used for treating bacterial infections in humans, domestic animals and even biocontrol in foods. Following an overview of the topic, we explore the common practice - both experimental and, in certain regions of the world, clinical - of mixing therapeutic phages into cocktails consisting of multiple virus types. We conclude with a discussion of the commercial and medical context of phage cocktails as therapeutic agents. In comparing off-the-shelf versus custom approaches, we consider the merits of a middle ground, which we deem 'modifiable'. Finally, we explore a regulatory framework for such an approach based on an influenza vaccine model.

Subfields: Ecology, Molecular Biology, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c00a6a6060d2d13fc6417a157b8ec2ced4ab5f22

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Citations in the corpus

Molecular and Evolutionary Determinants of Bacteriophage Host Range. (2019, background): “Moreover, pathogens may readily evolve resistance to individual phages, so infections need to be treated with phage cocktails where each of the members are to be validated [100].”
Overcoming the challenges of phage therapy for industrial aquaculture: A review (2019, background): “Some authors advise to limit the size of a cocktail to two to ten phages (Chan et al., 2013).”
Phage Therapy in the Postantibiotic Era (2019, background): “Additionally, the terms monophage and polyphage therapy clarify whether a single phage or a combination of phages is used, respectively (81).”
Efficiency of phage cocktails in the inactivation of Vibrio in aquaculture (2014, background): “Therefore, the high specificity of bacteriophages, that sometimes can be considered to be a disadvantage of phage therapy, namely when the photogenic bacteria are not known, may be circumvented by the use of phage cocktails, which broaden the spectrum of action (Chan et al., 2013; Sulakvelidze et al”
Emerging Strategies to Combat ESKAPE Pathogens in the Era of Antimicrobial Resistance: A Review (2019, methodology): “Readers may refer to previous reviews published on phage therapy which have described in numerous studies (Abedon et al., 2011; Chan et al., 2013; Górski et al., 2017; Lin et al., 2017; Sybesma et al., 2018).”