Die Themen: Antibiotika-Resistenz – Die tägliche Bedrohung / Phagen-Therapie – Mit Viren gegen Bakterien / Hoffnung im Osten – Zur Therapie nach Tiflis / Phagen-Forschung – Nachholbedarf im Westen
Les bactériophages vont-ils venir à la rescousse des antibiotiques pour lutter contre ces bactéries, de plus en plus nombreuses, qui résistent à tous nos antibiotiques? En tout cas, ces gentils virus se nourrissent de ces bactéries pathogènes multirésistantes. Ils s'accrochent à la paroi de la bactérie, lui injectent son propre ADN, et force la bactérie à produire de nombreuses copies du bactériophage, ce qui conduit à la faire exploser littéralement. Au bout du processus, la bactérie va libérer 50 ou 100 clones qui vont partir à la recherche de nouvelles victimes.
Expert round table on acceptance and re-implementation of bacteriophage therapy
This multidisciplinary expert panel opinion on bacteriophage therapy has been written in the context of a society that is confronted with an ever-increasing number of antibiotic resistant bacteria. To avoid the return to a pre-antibiotic era, alternative treatments are urgently needed. The authors aim to contribute to the opinion formation of relevant stakeholders on how to potentially develop an infrastructure and legislation that paves the way for the acceptance and re-implementation of bacteriophage therapy.
The rise of antibiotic resistance rekindles interest in a century-old virus treatment.
"For decades, patients behind the Iron Curtain were denied access to some of the best antibiotics developed in the West. To make do, the Soviet Union invested heavily in the use of bacteriophages — viruses that kill bacteria — to treat infections. Phage therapy is still widely used in Russia, Georgia and Poland, but never took off elsewhere. “This is a virus, and people are afraid of viruses,” says Mzia Kutateladze, who is the head of the scientific council at the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, which has been studying phages and using them to treat patients for nearly a century.
Now, faced with the looming spectre of antibiotic resistance, Western researchers and governments are giving phages a serious look. In March, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases listed phage therapy as one of seven prongs in its plan to combat antibiotic resistance. And at the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) meeting in Boston last month, Grégory Resch of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland presented plans for Phagoburn: the first large, multi-centre clinical trial of phage therapy for human infections, funded by the European Commission."
