By Deborah Balthazar At the University of Pittsburgh, testing to pick the best phage to fight infection-causing bacteria. UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Lynn Cole was in a never-ending cycle of getting recurrent blood infections. And no antibiotic drugs managed to kill off her zombie-like bacteria.“It just got so frustrating over the years because we couldn’t find the...
by Scott Lafee and Chuck Finder, University of California – San Diego A colorized scanning electron micrograph depicts Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Credit: NIAID An international team of researchers, led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh, report promising results from the largest case series yet of patients treated...
by Patrick Monahan, University of Pittsburgh Taken in the lab of Graham Hatfull at the University of Pittsburgh, this image shows a plate of bacteria — clear circles indicate where bacteriophages have done their work. The lab provides these bacteria-killing viruses to patients who have no other options to treat antibacterial-resistant infections. Credit: Aimee Obidzinski/University...
As antibiotics increasingly develop resistance to bacteria that cause infection, scientists have moved a step closer to harnessing viruses as an alternative form of therapy. Phage therapy is the concept of using viruses (known as phage) to kill bacteria, instead of using antibiotics. A growing number of infections, including pneumonia, tuberculosis, gonorrhoea, and salmonellosis, are...
Bacteriophage or ‘phage’ is a virus that selectively attacks bacteria. Phage therapy was used for centuries to treat bacterial infections, but was largely replaced when antibiotics became widely available. Researchers are now revisiting the use of phage therapy to treat bacterial infections that are growing increasingly resistant to current antibiotic treatments. Lead researcher of the...
KING’S COLLEGE LONDON A team of researchers including those from King’s College London and the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, have for the first time successfully applied bacteriophage (phage) therapy in mice to alcohol-related liver disease. Phages are viruses that specifically destroy bacteria. In a paper published today in Nature, the team...
The married professors were spending their Thanksgiving holiday in Egypt when the husband, Thomas L. Patterson, Ph.D., got very sick very quickly, experiencing fever, nausea and a racing heartbeat. By the time Patterson was accurately diagnosed with a highly multi-drug resistant bacterial infection, he was near death. His wife, Steffanie Strathdee, Ph.D., promised to “leave...
