back to article Bacteria-chomping phages could kill off HOSPITAL SUPERBUGS

UK research into nature's bacteria-munching bacteriophages is to be commercialised by American biopharma company AmpliPhi. Leicester University signed an exclusive license this week with AmpliPhi, which will fund further work on combatting antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" using phage treatments. Little is still known about …

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  1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Well all except Russia

    Where Stalin set up a phage research institute in his home state.

    Once again when the UK has a development the first question they ask seems to be "Who can we sell it off to."

    Or is because when they approach UK companies they are told "Not interested?"

    And BTW that ability of bacteria to evolve defenses to all antibiotics would be practically impossible without the drug industry selling them to livestock (mostly chicken) farmers as "growth promoters," exposing lots of bacteria to sub lethal doses and allowing them to pass on their resistance through plasmids.

    Thanks for that Big Pharma.

    1. The Indomitable Gall

      Re: Well all except Russia

      There's evidence that plasmid transfer is much rarer than previously thought, and that the genepool is simply thinning to make certain strains of a given bacteria prevalent.

      The intuitive explanation for this theory starts with the observation that all current antibiotics are naturally occuring, and have been on the planet (in fungi, mainly) since long before we climbed down from the trees, so the variety in naturally occuring antibiotics most likely reflects a variety in naturally occuring bacteria.

      The guys proposing this theory point to high levels of similarity in the bacteria's germlines, suggesting common descent rather than genetic transfer.

      1. codeusirae
        Holmes

        Re: Well all except Russia

        "Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is a cross-species form of genetic transfer. It occurs when the DNA from one species is introduced into another. The idea was ridiculed when first proposed more than 50 years ago, but the advent of drug-resistant bacteria and subsequent discoveries, including the identification of a specialized protein that bacteria use to swap genes, has led to wide acceptance in recent years."

        http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/590-does-evolution-select-for-faster-evolvers-horizontal-gene-transfer-adds-to-complexity-speed-of-evolution

    2. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: Well all except Russia

      "And BTW that ability of bacteria to evolve defenses to all antibiotics would be practically impossible without the drug industry selling them to livestock (mostly chicken) farmers as "growth promoters," exposing lots of bacteria to sub lethal doses and allowing them to pass on their resistance through plasmids."

      Which is why MRSA, VISA and VRSA all occur now in environments around hospitals, not farms. Right?

      I guess we should've stopped hospitals from raising chickens to feed the nation!

      Oh, we didn't let them start.

      We'll not even go into the rarity of plasmid transfer, you failed on reality alone.

      Because, MRSA, VISA and VRSA all are human transmitted, not transmitted by fowl or beast.

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        Re: Well all except Russia

        Perhaps you should look up the outbreak in Guatamal in 1967 where about 7000 people suffered multiply resistant dysentery.

        It's a standard text book case.

  2. wheelybird

    I remember this!

    This was on Tomorrow's World quite a few years back. Nice to see the relentless progress of science continues.

    1. PipV

      Re: I remember this!

      I remember this too BBC 2 Horizon - Phage the virus that cures. 1997.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy

  3. hplasm
    Facepalm

    About time!

    Someone has been holding back research on these.

    Anyone wonder why?

    1. Steve Renouf

      Re: About time!

      No, not wondering at all.. No wondering needed!

    2. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: About time!

      "Someone has been holding back research on these."

      Erm, large investments in antibiotics, lack of interest in reinventing the wheel with phage research, which would, each germ line one by one, have to go through the regulatory wringer.

      In short, totally different method of treatment, totally different technology, totally the same regulatory set of hurdles for each type of phage to be used as an antibiotic. Hence, there isn't suppression, only a lack of interest in the expense.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: About time!

        Hence, there isn't suppression, only a lack of interest in the expense.

        Man, your economics is harshing our conspiracy mellow. Stop being reasonable.

        (Incidentally, for those of you with crappy garage bands, may I recommend you consider "Our Conspiracy Mellow" for your next album title? Thank you.)

  4. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
    Happy

    This is all very well, until the phages reach the new nuclear reactors, and get mutated into giant person-eating super-phages. Just like we all saw in those documentaries, 'The Prisoner' and 'Pac-Man'.

    What will we do to fight the killer-phage menace, that we caused in order to fight the killer bacteria menace? I know an old woman, who swallowed a fly...

    On a serious note, hooray for research. Although I don't see how we can know they're the most abundant life-form in the universe. I'm sure the emperor Tharg the Magnificent will have a good deal to say about that.

    1. Crisp

      Re: Giant person-eating super-phages

      When they get large enough to be visible to the naked eye, couldn't we just hit them with a baseball bat?

      1. Eguro

        Re: Giant person-eating super-phages

        You could, but by that time the Phage(s) will simply the devour the bat as you're swinging it.

      2. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: Giant person-eating super-phages

        "When they get large enough to be visible to the naked eye, couldn't we just hit them with a baseball bat?"

        Since we've left reality aside, I'll stick with my football bat.

        1. Stuart21551

          Re: Giant person-eating super-phages

          I had one of those. ;-)

  5. Tony Green

    "the most abundant life form in the universe"

    Phew! Some claim.

    I'd love to see the evidence to back that one up.

    1. cyborg

      Re: "the most abundant life form in the universe"

      Lifeform is probably a stretch since most definitions of life make the virus something of an amibuity but provided you accept that and a liklihood that life in the universe will probably mostly consist of microrganisms then phages which live on those microrganisms are likely to be the most abundant DNA delivery machines in the universe.

    2. Don Jefe
      Happy

      Re: "the most abundant life form in the universe"

      Ah ha! It is on you to disprove them.

      Pronouncements like this are safe to make because they can't be falsified. It isn't exactly scientific to say such a thing, the wording is horrendous, but that statement was obviously aimed at the public to assuage fears. Talking to the non-scientific public is very difficult because the public is panicky, and generally ignorant, but at the same time you risk looking like an ass to the scientific community by oversimplifying. It's a tough thing to do well.

      1. Fibbles
        Facepalm

        Re: "the most abundant life form in the universe"

        "Ah ha! It is on you to disprove them.

        Pronouncements like this are safe to make because they can't be falsified. It isn't exactly scientific to say such a thing, the wording is horrendous, but that statement was obviously aimed at the public to assuage fears."

        If you're putting forward an idea, the burden of proof is on you, not everyone else. It's only after you have have presented some evidence supporting your idea that the onus switches to everyone else to try and disprove it.

        I'm nominating "Isn't exactly scientific" for understatement of the year.

      2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: "the most abundant life form in the universe"

        that statement was obviously aimed at the public

        That statement was obviously aimed at the Reg readership by Mr Orlowski, as flame bait.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "the most abundant life form in the universe"

      I would like to see you disprove it. Or for anyone to do it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "the most abundant life form in the universe"

        Invisible flying turtles are actually the most abundant form of life in the universe. And I would like to see you disprove it. Or for anyone to do it.

    4. Stephen Gray

      Re: "the most abundant life form in the universe"

      The evidence is as follows. A millilitre of sea water can contain 9×10 to the power of 8 bacteria of which about 75% are infected with a phage. There's a lot of sea water on Earth. I can't be arsed working it out. It's more than 10 though.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: "the most abundant life form in the universe"

        A millilitre of sea water can contain ...

        It's easy to argue that phages are the most abundant DNA-delivery entities (as noted by various commentators, "life form" is dubious) on Earth. Glossing that as "in the universe" requires rather different warrants; it's a statement of faith, not empirical observation or other scientific basis.

  6. Slacker@work
    Alert

    Time to start stocking up...

    All hands, stand by for Zombie apocalypse...

  7. J P

    So that's who bought the tech then...

    http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/1287589

  8. Voland's right hand Silver badge

    Factually incorrect

    USSR continued research into phages long after WW2 and developed usable phage treatments which were used in the food industry.

    In the UK fresh fish and fresh meat counters gets a "healthy" dose of disinfectant spray (makes me laugh when I see organic labels on them). USSR actually used a bio-weapon instead allowing them to do with much lower doses of disinfectant :)

    So there is a massive amount of prior art on that. It may be abandonware and without a present owner, but it is prior art none the less.

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      Re: Factually incorrect

      "USSR continued research into phages long after WW2 and developed usable phage treatments which were used in the food industry."

      Wasn't and isn't only the food industry. I recall hearing and seeing a program about customized phage lines available for order.

      Send in your pathogenic bacteria, get the phage to treat the infection.

  9. Tom 7

    "combat 90 per cent of the known strains of C.diff"

    And the 10% left that will become prevalent?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    So here we have a problem we created (antibiotic-resistence). How do we propose to solve it? Use a more aggressive alternative to antibiotics.

    How about we just let our immune system work and only use antibiotics in life-threatening situations. Or does that cut to deep into the pockets of Big Pharma? We can't have that, of course!

    1. James 51

      You're alternative is going to result in a lot of people dying. The advantage of phages that they co-evolve with the viruses they eat so it is more difficult for a virus to completely out-compete them.

      1. Tom 38

        You're alternative is going to result in a lot of people dying. The advantage of phages that they co-evolve with the viruses they eat so it is more difficult for a virus to completely out-compete them.

        Except they don't eat viruses, they eat bacteria - the clue is in the name, bacteriophage, bacteria destroyer.

        Nice try, no cylindrical smoking object.

        1. James 51

          Okay, you got me on that one. Should have been paying more attention.

      2. James Micallef Silver badge

        "You're alternative is going to result in a lot of people dying."

        Em...no - the OP clearly says that in life-threatening cases you would still use antibiotics. Simply do not prescribe antibiotics when they are not needed. Over-prescribing of antibiotics both to humans* and to healthy animals in livestock industry IS a big problem. Besides improving antibiotic resistance of 'bad' bacteria, it also kills of symbiotic 'good' bacteria (and then people spend millions in health shops buying probiotics... go figure!!)

        Of course as you say:

        "The advantage of phages that they co-evolve with the viruses they eat so it is more difficult for a virus to completely out-compete them.",

        phages have uses and advantages of their own, and their use + research into should be encouraged. But we should still stop using so much antibiotics

        *I know from some doctor friends that many patients insist on being given antibiotics even when they don't need them, and even when their ailment is viral not bacterial. The byzantine in-rules of medical institutions make it a huge problem for doctors to refuse. Maybe there should be a standard placebo 'antibiotic' for these cases

        1. Yet Another Commentard

          @James

          "Maybe there should be a standard placebo 'antibiotic' for these cases"

          It's an interesting idea, but ethically dubious. Your doctor would have to lie to you when prescribing the placebo because (s)he would obviously know it's a sugar pill. This applies to all prescriptions of placebos, not just here. Having your doctor lie to you, even if it's in your own and society's interests erodes the trust that should exist between the two parties.

          Once this "got out" that "apoxylalacillin" is a placebo there would be a backlash against the medical profession, claims of "big pharma" conspiracies, and possibly the movement of people away from medicine and towards alternative therapies because "doctors lie about medicines". Now the latter is fine if it's a self-correcting problem like a cold, but could be fatal if the patient had a serious condition that really wasn't going to be helped by a nice cup of herb tea and a dangling crystal.

          Education has to be part of the solution. The general lack of knowledge of basic medical matters is appalling. I'm not advocating that everyone should be a doctor, just that there must be room on the curriculum somewhere to teach about antibiotics, anti-virals, why most drugs will not resolve the problem instantly, why to always finish the dose of any drug course, how to deal with simple injuries, why going to casualty with athlete's foot is a dumb idea etc. etc.

          there also needs to be support for doctors refusing to prescribe where it is not necessary. Maybe upon refusal to prescribe the patient is given a form where the doctor writes on it "viral infection, no suitable medication" and the patient can send it off as a complaint. The patient then gets back from NHS Complaints Central a letter saying that no prescription would help, and have they noticed how they now feel better as their very own immune system has sorted it out.

          1. James Micallef Silver badge
            Thumb Up

            Re: @James

            "It's an interesting idea, but ethically dubious" - yes I agree completely, my comment was more than partially tounge-in-cheek. It just amazes me that a doctor could get in trouble from a patient complaint after refusing to prescribe antibiotics for a viral infection.

            As you say, the key is education

      3. John 110
        Trollface

        Pedant alert....

        "The advantage of phages that they co-evolve with the viruses they eat ..."

        Phages don't eat viruses.

        (Also note the correct use of an apostrophe...)

      4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Boffin

        "You're alternative is going to result in a lot of people dying. The advantage of phages that they co-evolve with the viruses they eat so it is more difficult for a virus to completely out-compete them."

        Err, yes & no.

        "Phage" is the old name for virus. These are viruses that parasitise bacteria.

        They are highly evolved to attack those bacteria, which is part of why they are quite useful, in there is very little danger of them jumping (several major) rungs up the evolutionary ladder to attack humans, unlike that favorite host organism of genetic engineers e.coli (which happily lives in humans already.)

      5. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        "The advantage of phages that they co-evolve with the viruses they eat so it is more difficult for a virus to completely out-compete them."

        Er, phages are a virus. They are a virus that exclusively predates upon bacteria.

        Their replication is sufficiently inefficient enough to produce mutations faster than bacteria can typically adapt to.

    2. Charles 9

      The problem is that many of these are ALREADY life-threatening. And what about people with compromised immune systems (transplant patients, HIV/AIDS patients, etc.)? On a more important front, antibiotics help to facilitate surgery, as the immune system is inherently compromised during a major surgical procedure (innards can be exposed to pathogens normally limited to the outside so they lack defence).

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        "The problem is that many of these are ALREADY life-threatening."

        Erm, they're called bacteriophages for a reason. They specialized exclusively upon certain species of bacteria *only*.

    3. squigbobble

      Yes, but...

      ...antibiotics don't evolve. Bacteriophages are just virii that attack bacteria, rather the virii which attack animal cells and that you're likely to notice yourself. As the bacteria evolve, so will the virii. Even within your body.

      The bacteriophage research centre in Tbilisi has been going for decades and doles out a range of creams, shots, etc. for patients with bacterial infections.

      One of the reasons why this hasn't been pursued in the West is that fact that the phages are not under your control so there's a paranoia that they'll evolve and turn on the patient. The other, bigger reason is that it's unpatentable in its current form.

      There was a documentary about this a few years ago (probably on Channel 4) where they chanced on on of the research teams taking on a bacterial outbreak of some sort that was centred at a hospital in Georgia. The method they used was ridiculously low tech; sample the sewage from the hospital, culture it, examine the cultures for evidence of phage activity, replicate the cultures where there's phage activity and then extract the phages and mix them into a cream or whatever. Not a PCR machine in sight.

    4. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      "How about we just let our immune system work and only use antibiotics in life-threatening situations. Or does that cut to deep into the pockets of Big Pharma? We can't have that, of course!"

      Ah, the "big pharma" bullshit.

      Ignoring the hell out of assholes insisting that they be prescribed an antibiotic for a generic viral cold millions per times per cold season.

      No, it's all physicians being the willing servants of the pharmaceutical industry.

  11. Phil Atkin

    a) very interesting

    b) keep up the Silicon Roundabout attacks.

    That Bong dude hasn't written much lately, did his funding run out? Time for a C round.

  12. Mike Green
    WTF?

    What took them so long?

    I saw a programme on the BBC about 10 years ago all about the Russian use of Phages on bacteria. They would find a new bacteria in a hospital, go to the sewage effluent of the hospital and find a corresponding phage which eats it. The only reason it was a Russian secret was all the research was published in Russian in Russian journals, which western scientists hadn't been reading. They've been using them since the 60s or 70s...

    Not complex....

    1. Tony Haines

      Re: What took them so long?

      What took them so long is that actually it _is_ quite complex.

      Phages are also not as easy to use as antibiotics - they're quite specific, which means you need to know what you're dealing with before you can treat. Also, they can only be used externally (counting the gut as external - which it is, topologically speaking).

      All of this together means that there's relatively little money to be made from them for most applications.

      So the upshot is that they're great when you're dealing with known outbreaks, or a chronic, recalcitrant infection. The former is what the Russians were dealing with. The latter seems to be the niche targetted by this work. I suspect that this has only recently become common enough to be a worthwhile approach.

      1. grammarpolice

        Re: What took them so long?

        All of this together means that there's relatively little money to be made from them for most applications.

        And now we see the real reason that big pharma has been persuading the medical establishment in the West that they're too risky.

  13. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
    Boffin

    "despite being the most abundant life form in the universe"

    Or, more accurately, in the known universe. To put it another way, within our solar system.

    GJC

    1. Uffish

      Re: "despite being the most abundant life form in the universe"

      @Geoff Campbell. Nice one - and to take it to it's only currently provable or disprovable limit "in the more carefully studied parts of this earth".

      1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: "despite being the most abundant life form in the universe"

        A good point. Wouldn't it be cool to find, at some point in the future, some sort of extremophile organism living on the surface of the metal sphere at the core of the Earth?

        GJC

  14. Paul Naylor
    Thumb Up

    Good news!

    I saw an Horizon documentary about phages a good number of years ago (when antibiotic resistance wasn't even being talked about in the meeja), which showed a bunch of Russian boffins scooping water out of sewerage plants. Can't believe that the West is only just coming round to looking at this. It'll be interesting to see how this research progresses.

    (Except that the Daily Mail won't have any Superbug of Death stories to 'report' on)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Good news!

      '(Except that the Daily Mail won't have any Superbug of Death stories to 'report' on)'

      S'okay all the people surviving bacterial infections means the Mail can run HOSPITAL OVERCROWDING horror stories.

      And thanks for confirming this sounded awfully familiar from 'Horizon' - must have been a long time ago because it was a good BBC* 'Horizon'.

      * Before Bloody Cox.

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        Re: Good news!

        "And thanks for confirming this sounded awfully familiar from 'Horizon' - must have been a long time ago because it was a good BBC* 'Horizon'."

        I wouldn't be entirely certain of that....

        I sort of think this might have been one of the QED series.

    2. Eguro

      Re: Good news!

      "Could the Superbug Killer be a menace in disguise?"

      "How the Superbug Killer could end up killing your family"

      "Terrorists believed to support Phage research; Should you?"

  15. Yet Another Commentard

    Clever

    This is a really good idea. As far as I know no eukaryote (just about all living things bar bacteria) has ever been infected by a bacterophage despite us eating millions of them every day, having them in cuts, on our hands etc. So, this is clever as it should not lead to the microbiological equivalent of a cane toad problem but should deal with the very nasty bugs.

    Phages are not too badly understood once studied, they have so few genes that the complete lifecycle (using the term "life" in its loosest possible way) can be seen at the molecular level. A quick search on phage lambda (that one targets E coli) would show you the exact actions taken from infection, through celluar "hijack" to bacterial death (usually through bursting, called lysis). The phage is interesting as it has genes running left and right on its genetic sequence, and we know pretty well how they work. Oh, and they look really cool too.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Phages

    > Little is still known about phages

    That might be true in IT circles, but molecular genetics has been using them for over 50 years as a tool. What has become clear recently from DNA sequencing work of environmental isolates, is the sheer number out there, so there's probably a lot to learn. The problem with using them as antibiotics is that they can't be introduced into the bloodstream because they provoke an immune response, so this idea of using them in the gut is a clever trick. Incidentally, they aren't all good guys - some can transfer pathogenicity between bacteria.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    US Patent in ...

    3 .. 2 .. 1

    Will the UK taxpayers get a discount for having funded the original research?

    1. tony2heads

      Re: US Patent in ...

      Hmm - what about Russian Prior Art

  18. The First Dave
    Boffin

    Exciting stuff.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    First superbugs

    Then when they mutate everything else on the Earth.

    Fairly sure I've seen a B-movie along those lines.

  20. cyborg
    Boffin

    Quorum chemicals?

    As well as using phages to attack bacteria I recall some research into replicating the signalling quorum chemicals bacteria know so they can attack their host en masse. By signalling early the body's own defenses will be altered when the bacteria start acting too soon.

    Antibiotics seem doomed to become an irrelevance simply because they cannot keep with the pace of change natural mechanisms have.

  21. Steve Renouf
    Mushroom

    One question...

    Unlike Domestos et al., how doe sit tell which are the bad bacteria and which are the GOOD bacteria. Or is it another indiscriminate scatter-gun approach?

    1. squigbobble

      Re: One question...

      Phages are species-specific in the way that normal viruses are. They have to evolve to keep up with the bacteria.

    2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Flame

      Re: One question...

      [chomps on cigar]

      The only good bacteria, is a dead bacteria! These so-called "friendly" bacteria, are just pinko, commie turncoats! I wouldn't trust 'em further than I could spit! Napalm is the only language they understand. It's only because of these long-haired hippy types, and gutless politicians, that hospitals don't use napalm!

      1. John 110
        Mushroom

        Re: One question...

        You have to takeoff and nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure...

        1. sam bo

          Re: One question...

          Thanks for the change of perspective, I had always seen nuking from orbit as an attack on an orbiting menace. Now I see it can also mean nuking something ground-based from the safety of an orbiting craft.

    3. hplasm
      Boffin

      Re: One question...

      Because each type of phage eats one type of bacteria- nothing like antibiotics.

    4. Eguro

      Re: One question...

      My guess would be that there isn't simply a one-phage-hit-all thing in existence, but that you'd need specific variations to combat specific infections

    5. Filippo Silver badge

      Re: One question...

      Like most viruses, phages are extremely specific. As a treatment, they would be way more accurate than antibiotics, which notoriously tend to kill off good bacteria as well.

      1. grammarpolice

        Re: One question...

        Also, when they have finished eating all their target bacteria, they die off because they don't have any food any more, instead of hanging around damaging anything else.

    6. James Micallef Silver badge

      Re: One question...

      Not stated very clearly, but from what I get in the article and some comments above, a specific phage is required to eat a specific bacteria. Possibly this phage might also eat other beneficial bacteria, but it seems at least more focused than antibiotics. Even if it isn't super laser-like focus it's at least a rifle instead of a shotgun.

    7. The Indomitable Gall

      Simply put...

      If I was to tell you I was going to keep "animals" on my land, would you worry about being eaten? No, cos you know it'll be cows or sheep. Or pigs, at worst, but they'll only eat you if you're already dead.

      Everything in nature has a natural diet, so you pick the phages for which "food" means something that is undesirable to humans ("bad bacteria").

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Simply put...

        Or pigs, at worst, but they'll only eat you if you're already dead.

        Apparently you don't know much about pigs.

        FWIW, my wife's great-grandfather was eaten by pigs. As best the ME could tell, he was alive when they started, though probably incapacitated by a stroke. Unpleasant.

        The records of medieval and early-modern Europe are full of death-by-pig. There's a nice little discussion of it in Stallybrass & White.

        I'll grant you, though, that pigs are unlikely to stop eating you before you're dead, so the end result is the same.

  22. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    It's tough to use because Big Pharma can't figure a way to make money out of it.

    The best I could come up would be special hardware to speed up the finding of the right killer phage for a bacteria, then identifying the ideal culture conditions.

    Note that's where their specificity works against you. IIRC they used to use egg embryos for this (yes that business with Michael Caine in "Billion Dollar Brain" is real). How specific it is is another matter. Is it down to the species? or down to (literally) this variant?

    BTW I think they tend to use the "T Even" series of phages for modding the contents of C.Coli, usually T4.

  23. Yet Another Commentard

    @Steve

    Yes, to confirm the answer given by others. Bacteriophages are viruses that exploit bacteria. They are quite specific, usually binding to specific proteins stuck in the cell walls of the host bacteria. So the example I gave above, phage lambda, only binds and infects Escerichia coli.

    That in and of itself is a mixed blessing, as there are a lot of E coli in you right now doing you lots of good. There are some "rogue strains" of it that will cause problems, such as you hear about on the news from time to time.

    It's been a long time since I studied them, but I am unaware of any Clostridium species being good news. These bad boys include C tetani - gives you tetanus, C botulinum - gives you botulism via botulinium toxin (which I think is the single most toxic thing known) and usually death. This is the stuff celebs have diluted preparations of injected into their faces. Then there is C difficle, which is a tough little fella that kills people via any one of a number of horrid gastric manners. It forms spores which are resistant to heat, antibiotics, cold and ethanol. Which is a shame, as that's how we try and sterilise most things. To add to the problem they live in many people quite harmlessly, and flare up when the other gut bacteria are killed off (say by antibiotic or chemotherapy). Then they are a problem, so if the phages could be delivered to the gut to attack them it would give the good guys a chance to come back before the host is dead.

    Should the phages "escape" they won't do much harm, they should only bind to C difficile. The two of them will have been in an evolutionary arms race for time out of mind, so nothing much will happen to upset the balance of the general eco-system.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ampliphi are a quoted company

    It's worth noting that Ampliphi (APHB) are quoted on the US stock market, so one can take a stake in the future of phages - here's a link to its quote:

    http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=APHB

    For some years APHB was called Biocontrol Limited, and was wholly British, until it reversed into a US company called Targeted Genetics and got the quote. It's also bought an Australian phage specialist and is now considered the world leader in phage technology, plus it has some potentially huge royalty and license fee streams from legacy products coming its way. There's a good investment thread on it here for reference:

    http://uk.advfn.com/cmn/fbb/thread.php3?id=25624085

  25. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Boffin

    Interesting, but...

    As others have stated there is a host of prior research on this.

    I have done some modelling and simulation research, which shows that the presence of non-host bacteria (i.e., not the target of the phage) can scupper its attempts to fight the pathogen. I called this effect the "decoy effect". In complex bacterial ecosystems such as the intestines, the harmless bacteria can easily outnumber the harmful ones by a huge factor.

    There are quite a few observations support this idea, showing that phage treatment, or treatment with bacterium-eating bacteria such as the wonderfully named Bdellovibrio bacteriovorax (there is also a Vampirococcus) help most in those cases when the host microflora is absent or is outnumbered (see M.H.F. Wilkinson, Predation in the presence of decoys: an inhibitory factor on pathogen control by bacteriophages or bdellovibrios in dense and diverse ecosystems. J. Theor. Biol., (2001) 208:27-36. Pre-print version available in PDF (292 kB)).

    This does not mean the opportunities offered by phages should not be researched. We should not expect them to solve every (bacterial) ailment. Personally I think we will keep having to find new antimicrobial strategies. It is a case of what in evolution is called the "Red Queen Effect": you have to run just to keep in the same place, in terms of fitness.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So I'll say it... does anyone know a good "Web Phage " designer?

    Sorry, I'll get my coat now....

  27. Stuart Halliday
    Facepalm

    I hear that Brass used to kill off bacteria. But when hospitals switched door knobs, handles, fittings from brass to steel or plastic they removed an important barrier against the spread of infection without realising!

    Oops!

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Brass is mildly antimicrobial, yes, due to its copper content. Ditto bronze, or pure copper fittings, though the last would be an obvious target for theft.

      Linoleum is mildly antiseptic as well, due to the oxygenating linseed oil in the formulation. Unfortunately it's rarely used these days, having been superseded by cheap, colorful plastic flooring at the low end, and PVC and VCT (vinyl composite tile) at the high.

  28. John Tserkezis

    Quote from next year's newspaper:

    "Bacteria-chomping phages run rampant and decimate‎ most of mandkind"

    It's like these guys never watch any science fiction from hollywood or something.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ampliphi are a public company

    Ampliphi Biosciences (APHB) are quoted on the US markets at around 50 cents a share if anyone's interested in investing in phages.

    They used to be Biocontrol Limited, wholly based in the UK, before they reversed into an American public company a couple of years ago. Subsequently they bought Special Phage Services from Australia, and APHB now claim they are the world leaders in bacteriophages.

    They also have some potentially huge legacy technologies from the company they reversed into, Targeted Genetics, including royalties and license payments from the world's first US-approved gene therapy treatment, Glybera, and a heart disease treatment called MYDICAR which is in Phase 2b trials.

  30. phil dude
    Pint

    some more information..

    Kudos to the nice comments above!!

    I thought since I am at a genetics conference I would add a few more parameters...

    1) infection of humans

    We simply cannot know this for sure. HOWEVER there is some very well researched biochemistry that suggests this is not likely....

    Phages insert DNA into bacterial cells, and this is the method of "infection". The reason this works is because bacteria to a very large extent depend upon horizontal gene transfer i.e. DNA from other lysed bacteria will be taken up by bacteria. This is one trait that is exploited by humans for synthetic biology called "competence", by I digress...

    Eukaryotics cells (including humans, of course!) if they see naked DNA will chew it up very fast. Naked DNA is a Bad Thing (tm), so a rogue phage that managed to get its DNA into a human cell, would have no "mechanism" for it to be integrated into the human genome; this is how viruses that "matter" work....

    This is the intermission where I point out that MOST phages are DNA based, but not all...

    Back to the main feature.

    If you want to know how HARD it is for a virus to infect a human cell, look no further than the retroviruses....

    This includes HIV...

    The viruses are RNA (this is the bit that comes when you take DNA and set a polymerase on it, called transcription). So , you may ask, "how does this get past the human/euk surveillance". Well remember when we said that DNA is pounced upon? Well RNA is too (The enzymes Rnases are exceedingly good at their jobs as any lab person will tell you), only RNA in humans can be very long but also has evolved to be mobile (mRNA is messenger RNA), so mobile RNA is sort of "allowed".

    But the tricky Retroviruses have an enzyme called "reverse transcriptase" which turns RNA back into DNA...and the worse thing is it uses the cell machinery!! Bang. We have a problem...

    Biology is fascinating....

    I must say when I first read this I wondered "how are they going to patent this?". Unless they have come up with a really clever piece of design software...

    OK Beer, 'cos that's what this week is about ;-)

    P.

  31. SMabille

    IP issues

    Apparently one of the main reason phages therapy has not been developed that much in the West is under current IP law you can't patent phages.

    So who care if it can treat 90% of super-bug and solve the long term antibiotics resistance problem, if pharma company can't patent it, they won't develop it.

    Remember their main (and only) objective is profit for their shareholders. Most of them being pension funds, there might even be a slight conflict of interests... are they really that interested in seeing you living long after retirement age?

    1. Charles 9

      Re: IP issues

      "are they really that interested in seeing you living long after retirement age?"

      Since a longer life means more time for treatment regimens, then yes they'd be interested in keeping their customers alive.

      That said, the economics of repeat business being superior to one-time business means private enterprise can be counted on researching permanent solutions like cures and long-term vaccine regimens. This is one reason I don't like private enterprise controlling medicine: their motivations are against its best interests.

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