Are there any infections which are or could become resistant to this form of therapy? (Antibiotics are widely in use to day, and that’s why antibiotic resistant bacteria are well known.)
The great feature of viruses is that they evolve. If you have a bacteria where your existing viruses aren’t very effective you can try all your existing viruses against them and recombine existing viruses. Afterwards you can see whether any of your mixes produce non-zero effects. Once you have a virus with non-zero effects you can in-vitro allow evolution to optimize the virus to be effective against the strain you are targeting.
Viruses fought various organisms over billions of years and no bacteria evolved to have virus proof coating.
There’s no good reason to think that the arms race between viruses and bacteria will suddenly be decided in favor of bacteria just because we humans produce more viruses.
Phage therapy is very different then antibiotics because you can’t evolve antibiotics the way you can evolve viruses in labs.
So phage therapy won’t have the weakness of antibiotics (some things are resistant) because it isn’t using one existing general attack, but instead creates a new set of specialized attacks/tactics.
Yes. It’s a toolkit that allow more targeted attacks on bacteria then antibiotics provide. This means that you get the benefits of a more targeted intervention but you regulation that allows you to provide more targeted interventions and the analytics to target your interventions.
Are there any infections which are or could become resistant to this form of therapy? (Antibiotics are widely in use to day, and that’s why antibiotic resistant bacteria are well known.)
The great feature of viruses is that they evolve. If you have a bacteria where your existing viruses aren’t very effective you can try all your existing viruses against them and recombine existing viruses. Afterwards you can see whether any of your mixes produce non-zero effects. Once you have a virus with non-zero effects you can in-vitro allow evolution to optimize the virus to be effective against the strain you are targeting.
Viruses fought various organisms over billions of years and no bacteria evolved to have virus proof coating.
There’s no good reason to think that the arms race between viruses and bacteria will suddenly be decided in favor of bacteria just because we humans produce more viruses.
Phage therapy is very different then antibiotics because you can’t evolve antibiotics the way you can evolve viruses in labs.
So phage therapy won’t have the weakness of antibiotics (some things are resistant) because it isn’t using one existing general attack, but instead creates a new set of specialized attacks/tactics.
Yes. It’s a toolkit that allow more targeted attacks on bacteria then antibiotics provide. This means that you get the benefits of a more targeted intervention but you regulation that allows you to provide more targeted interventions and the analytics to target your interventions.
Seems unlikely as phages can evolve just as fast.