Jan 24, 2007
Viruses Versus Bacteria
In 1919, long before antibiotics were commonplace and long before the notion of drug resistance had emerged, a doctor in the east European state of what is now Georgia, Felix d’Herelle, gave a patient suffering from severe dysentery a seemingly lethal concoction of viruses. You might think such a drink would kill the patient, but these were no ordinary viruses, they were bacteriophages, the nemesis of bacteria.
The patient was well again within a week.
Thus was heralded in the age of phage therapy. Different viral strains were selected for almost every bacterial infection. Diseases were cured. What’s more, because bacteriophages are themselves in some sense alive, they can evolve to keep up with any resistance efforts mounted by the bacteria.
So what happened to bacteriophages? Why are the news headlines filled with stories of new deadly bacteria, such as MRSA, and the newly re-emerged forms of tuberculosis? Why are we so worried about outbreaks of E coli, salmonella, and other bacteria. Surely, we have a whole armoury of trusty phages to turn to that can wipe out the rank and file of resistance microbes quickly?
Well, we don’t, somewhere between the discovery of penicillin and the second world war, chemical antibiotics fell in to pharmaceutical line as the treatment of choice to deal with bacterial infections. Never mind the fact that within months of the first dose of penicillin being given doctors were already seeing resistance. Today, there are thousands of antibiotics on the market, some are even available over-the-counter in southern Europe. Moreover, in countries that cannot really afford to use them, individuals receive short dose regimens that don’t cure their illness and provide new opportunities for bacteria to develop resistant genes.
Swiss science editor Thomas Häusler tells the story of bacteriophages and phage therapy from its humble roots to its dimly recalled heyday of the 1920s and 1930s in his book Viruses vs. Superbugs. He tells a tale of rancidity and disease that were all but eradicated by bacteriophages but that is gradually returning as hospital wards succumb to the resistant hoards and various sectors of society, such as drug users and the homeless are dealt a deadly blow as TB and other “old” diseases crawl the streets.
In the USA alone some 90000 people die each year from these so-called superbugs. The likes of the World Health Organization and other official bodies agree that things can only get worse. Perhaps a discovery from the middle of the Great War of 1914-1918 could take the place of the dozens of obsolete antibiotics stacked on pharmacy shelves and provide a final cure for the bacterial infections that until the 1960s the medical profession had all but consigned to the history books.
I can only speculate, as I am not an expert, but I would expect that the selectivity of such a phage for cancer cells vs. normal cells would be a huge issue. Kind of like the chemotherapeutic drugs we use right now. Bacteria are quite distinct from human cells. Different cancers have different phenotypes, so one would have to choose one with a distinct membrane protein (maybe a fusion protein?) or something that the virus could recognize and ‘use’ to distinguish between normal cells and the cancer cells.
Does anyone know if it might be possible to engineer a bacteriophage that would attack cancer cells rather than bacteria? Maybe someone already thought of this idea and is working on it, but it could perhaps provide a new kickstart to the field of phage therapy and get the gerontocentric pharma-biotech industry interested.
Dear Dave
I am delighted to read your article about phage therapy – and to see that my good friends and colleagues Mike in England and Bill in Canada have posted comments too. Do please visit my latest news page on http://www.relax-well.co.uk.
It is very good news! To explain – this week I have received a letter from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. They had invited me to an interview in January for a Travelling Fellowship and the Science and Technology panel were very interested indeed in the whole subject. So my application was successful! You can see from their letter that they will be sending out lots of publicity. There are so many well-connected Trustees and members of the Council that I am sure that phage therapy will have to be looked at properly now by the powers that be. It has a lot of potential as we know, but it will need a shift in approach for them to be more careful and accurate in the way that bacteria are identified and the right medicine is administered – also to respect all the hard work and dedication of the FSU scientists and doctors – and not just to look on it as a money-making machine to be exploited via patents and big pharma. It will involve more international cooperation and a lot more trust in nature to kill the superbugs for us! As yet, nearly everyone seems to think that all viruses are baddies – even many dictionaries give the wrong information about phages, and they are not even mentioned in school science.
Apart from that, in the last few months since Dr Zemphira Alavidze came over to England from the Republic of Georgia for the first time and met me and Mike, there are several people who have already been over to Georgia and Poland for treatment. I shall be going myself very soon, accompanying a patient and paving the way for future visits. Then I shall also be going to Poland and Texas to see what the situation is over there.
I hope that little bit of background info is helpful for you! Also, the first human clinical trials (to Western standards) are just being completed at the moment in a London hospital so all in all, it is very good news really.
Dear Mr. Bradley,
How would you suggest we could make the NHS adopt phage therapy to save thousands of UK lives annually? The Helsinki Declaration article 32 states that whenever proven methods have proved ineffective, doctors must, with patient consent, try ‘unproven’ (my colons) methods. As phage therapy has been proven by over 80 years of use in Goergia, as effective, it should be a no-brainer for any Health Service to use it. I wonder if phage would be effective against beurocracy and vested interest?
Regards,
Mike Jozefiak
Choosing to let patients die of superbug infections!
It is my humble opinion that antibiotic-resistance is the mother of all regulatory-scientific misadventures; however, choosing to let patients die in the light of the overwhelming scientific evidence that bacteriophage therapy could cure many of these infections is a crime!
[I cropped Bill’s original post, because he seems to have posted it elsewhere verbatim previously on other websites – e.g. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/youropinions.php?opinionid=20439