Team:IISc-Bangalore/PhageShift

PhageShift

Since the discovery of penicillin in 1928, antibiotics were long heralded as the harbingers of an age when bacterial infections would become obsolete. The falsity of this statement was realised quickly with the discovery of multidrug resistant bacteria soon after. In 1960 the first strain of MRSA was identified, signalling towards a time when antibiotics would not be sufficient to treat all the infections that were in store. Subsequently, multiple groups and organisation started working towards methods that would ensure such a condition does not arise. One of the few other promising methods that were being used before antibiotics came into the picture was phage therapy - the use of bacteriophages against their cognate hosts to ensure efficient elimination. However, the ease of characterization of antibiotics and a sudden burst in popularity overshadowed the strides that were being made in the field of phage therapy entirely.

Recently, the field has started gaining traction again with the appearance of pathogens that are resistant to even the most physiologically deleterious antimicrobial drugs. However, phages are still long way off from being used as mainstream antimicrobials, mainly because of the difficulty in characterisation and varying genetic blueprints owing to mutation. Most regulatory organisations around the world deny the use of such agents for therapeutics.