Researchers at Northwestern University have achieved a major breakthrough by causing a lethal pathogen to self-destruct from within.
Expanding on the growing interest in “phage therapies,” this groundbreaking work is a crucial advancement in the development of custom viruses as innovative treatments to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It also provides valuable insights into the inner workings of phages, an area of biology that has been largely unexplored.
The study, titled “A synthetic biology approach to assemble and reboot clinically relevant Pseudomonas aeruginosa tailed phages,” has been published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum.
“Antimicrobial resistance is often described as the ‘silent pandemic,'” explained Erica Hartmann, the lead researcher at Northwestern. “The number of infections and fatalities from infections is on the rise globally. It’s a significant problem. Phage therapy has emerged as an underutilized alternative to our overreliance on antimicrobials. However, phages are still a mystery in many ways. We have limited knowledge about them. The more we understand about the mechanisms of phages, the better equipped we will be to develop more effective treatments. Our project is at the forefront of this field, as we are gaining real-time insights into phage biology as we engineer them.”
2024-01-31 09:41:03
Post from phys.org