Phage Therapy is a form or anti-bacteria therapy in which bacteriophage viruses attack and kill bacteria. There are bacteriophages for every species of bacteria, and even if the bacteria spontaneously have a genetic change and become antibiotic resistant, or the bacteria are intentionally manipulated by biowarfare researchers or bioterrorists, there are already in nature bacteriophages that will kill those bacteria. Bacteriophages are the most abundant life forms on earth. Even a single drop of seawater is teeming with millions phages, and the human body, all animals, plants, are covered with millions of them. And phage therapy preparations are much less expensive to prepare than pharmaceutical drugs. (1)
Potential Uses of Phage therapy
1. Phage therapy holds promise to solve the huge public health problem of antibiotic resistant infections, such as MRSA, that kill tens of thousands of hospital patients each year in the US and around the world.
2. Phage therapy could be used to cure TB, and other bacterial diseases that kill millions of people worldwide each year.
3. Phage therapy could put an end to or at least reduce the threat of bioterrorism and biowarfare, since no bacteria could be manipulated or developed that could escape bacteriophages.
4. Phage therapy could potentially be used to cure many other types of non-bacterial microbial diseases such as malaria, which is a protozoa disease that kills several million people each year, and infects millions more. It is highly probable that there are phages that will kill virually every form of non-viral microbe that exists, be it a bacteria, fungi, protozoa, fluke, or any other type of microbe.
5. Phage therapy could cure dread diseases such as necrotizing fasciitis and other microbial diseases for which there is no pharmacological cure, as well as, emerging microbial diseases for which there is no present cure.
6. Phage therapy can be used to treat epidemics of non-viral microbial animal diseases that kill millions of animals each year worldwide, or require their destruction;
7. Phage therapy could potentially be used to cure non-viral microbial plant diseases that destroy billions of dollars worth of crops each year, as well as save trees that have become infected withh diseases, and which has resulted in millions of trees being destroyed; This could help minimize the use of pesticides that destroy the environment;
8. Phage therapy could potentially be used to kill insects that attack food crops, thereby saving billions of dollars worth of crops, and elimating or minimizing the need for costly pesticides that destroy the environment;
9. Phage therapy could potentially be used to selectively attack cancer tumors; Research in China and elsewhere is currently being done on this;
10. Phages could be use to kill food-borne pathogens, and help preserve food;
Researchers Currently Doing Phage Therapy Research and Treatment Worldwide, and the Organization They Are Associated With:
1. Richard Carlton, president of Exponential Biotherapies, Inc. (1)
2. Janakiraman "Ram" Ramachandran, founded GangaGen, Inc. in 2000;(1)
3. Alexander Sulakvelidze, co-founder of Intralytix, Inc., Baltimore, MD; Former director of the State Microbiology Laboratory in Tbilisi, Georgia, before immigrating to the US in the early 1990's; His coompany is also exploring the market for PhageBioDerm in the US;(1)
4. Dr. Elizabeth Kutter, Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA; phage researcher; She is working with the USDA to find phages that will clear the deadly E. coli O157:H7 from cattle guts; (1)
5. Toney Ilenchuk, vice-pres of Biophage Pharma, Montral, Quebec; (1)
6. Dr. Diane Schaak, Rowland Institute for Science, Harvard University; supports research on alternatives to antibiotics and said phage therapy would be a wonderful way to go. (1)
7. Dr. Amiran Meipariani, bacteriologist, working for 45 years at the Eliava Institute, Tbilisi, Georgia; (1)
8. Dr. Mzia Kutateladze, microbiologist at the Eliava Institute since the 1980's;
9. Dr. Zemphira Alavidze, microbiologist at Eliava Institute;
10. Tony Smithyman, Managing director of SPS, a phage therapy co. in Sydney, Australia; He went to Tbilisto see in person what the Eliava Institute was doing;
11. Dr. Ry Young, a phage biologist at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX;
12. Dr. Vincent Fischetti and team at Rockefeller University in NYC, NY;
13. Asher Wilf, founder od company, Phage Biotech, Ltd., in Rehovot, Israel;
14. Dr. Michael DuBow, co-founder of PhageTech in St. Laurent, Canada, and now at the Universite Paris Sud XI in Orsay, France;
15. Dr. Donna Duckworth, microbiologist at the University of Florida at Gainesville, FL; has isolated a phage that kills Vibrio vulnificus, a bacteria sometimes founsd in oysters that can cause severe illness in people; She has also used the phages to cure infected mice;
16. Dr. Paul Gulig, microbiologist at the University of Florida, Gainesville, working with Dr. Duckworth;
Historical Researchers on Phage Therapy:
1. Dr. E. H. Hankin, British chemist, 1892, reported that water from the sewage ladden Ganges River and Jumma River in India would kill the cholera pathogen; (1)
2. Dr. Frederick W. Twort, British bacteriologis, 1915, reported an "ultramicroscopic virus" that somehow killed bacteria in solution; (1)
3. Dr. Felix D'Herelle, Pasteur Institute, Paris, France, 1916, pioneer researcher on phge therapy who coined the term, "bacteriophage". Developed a phage preparation in 1919 that cured dysentery (which, along with other microbial caused diarrheal diseases still kills millions of children around the work in 2015). D'Herelle did phage therapy trials across the globe. In 1933, he left Yale University and went to Tbilisi and joined Eliava(1)
4. In the 1930's, American scientists abandoned phage therapy, but Soviet scientists keppt doing research, especially in Tbilisi, Georgia, ormerly part of the USSR. (1)
5. Dr. Giorgi Eliava, pioneering phage therapy research in Tbilisi, Georgia, from the 1920's to 1937, when he was executed. Eliava had worked with D'Herelle for 5 yyears and then founded the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi in 1923, with the initial blessings of Joseph Stalin. But tragically, Eliava, fell out of favor with Stalin, apparently for something unrelated to phage research, and was executed by Soviet secret police in 1937. However, the Instiute survived, and phage research continued, and later recived strong support from the Soviet governnment, especially the Soviet military. And support for phage therapy by the Russian military is still strong, after the Soviet meltdown in 1989. (1)
6. Dr. Max Delbruck did phage therapy in the 1940's and headed the "famous Phage Group".
7. Dr. Carl Merril, did phage research at the National Institutes of Health in the 1970's on why phage therapy is often not effective in vivo, finding that the speen clears the viruses in the blood before they can work.
8. Dr. Sankar Adhya, colleague of Dr. Carl Merril at NIH in the 1970's; Both teamed up with Richard Carlton and EBI in the 1990's and published a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 1996;
Non-Profit Organizations Doing Research or Reporting on Phage Therapy:
American Medical Association (AMA) published a "damning critique" of phage therapy in 1934. (1). (But what else could be expected from an organization heavily influences by the pharmaceutical industry?)
Eliava Foundation, Tbilisi, Georgia This is a part of the eliava Institute;
Eliava Institute, Tbilisi, Georgia; Has been doing research on phage therapy since the 1920's; The institute has records on phage therapy shipped to and used by researchers around the world since the 1920's. But (as of 2002) the last entry in their log of shipments is for 1989, when thhe USSR disiintegrated, and Georgia became an independent country. (1)
3. Several phage therapy research centers sprang up in Eastern Europe;
4. Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy (IIET), Wroclaw, Poland, said to have "perhaps the most important sata in the English literature" on the efectiveness of phage therapy; Researchers there did an experiment treating 500 people with phage therapy. THe IIET was forging ties with western labs as of 2002. (Why do they have all of this English literature?)
5. "Phage Group", headed by Max Delbruck in the 1940's at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York;
6. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, NY; Site of the Phage Group, headed by Max Delbruck
7. Food and Drug Adminiistration (FDA), Rockville, MD, as of 2002, the FDA had not yet issued written guidence on how it intends to regulate phage therapy.
8. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC; gave Intralytix, Inc. a permit to test phage therapies in a food processing plant in 2002;
9. US Department of Agriculture in 2002 was working with Intralytix and found that phages were more effective than chlorine in ridding ffruits and vegetables of Salmonella; The USDA is also working with Dr. Ellizabeth Kutter;
Hospitals, Other Organizations, and Doctors Worldwide Providing Phage Therapy Treatment:
Certain hospitals and doctors in Tbilisi, Georgia associated with the Eliava Research Institute; (1)
Eliava Phage Therapy Center, Tbilisi, Georgia;
University of California - San Diego, Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics
Companies Developing Phage Therapy Products:
1. Exponential Biotherapies, Inc. (EBI), Port Washington, NY; Doing research on vancomycin resistant enterococci, planned to do clinical trials in 2003; (1)
2. Two dozen other companies developing phage therapy products and are hoping to get a foothold in the food and livestock market; (1)
3. GangaGen, Inc. Banglore, India; (1)
4. Intralytix, Inc., Baltimore, Maryland; co-founded by Alexander Sulakvelidze; (1)
5. Biophage Pharma, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; (1)
6. Eli Lilly and many enntrepreneurs piled into the phage business in the 1920's, with mixed results of their research. (1)
7. SPS, Ltd., a phage therapy company in Dydney, Austrlia;
8. PhageTech, Inc., St. Laurent, Quebec, Canada; co-founded by Michael DuBow; studying a large number of phage "killer" proteins that derail the hostmetabolism to make it easier for the phages to reproduce within the bacteria;
9. MicroStealth Technologies, Cambridge, MA?? company formed by Dr. Diane Schaak and colleagues to use phages as delivery vehicles for antimicrobial peptides that are active only inside bacterial cells;
10. Phage Biotech, Ltd., Rehovot, Israel, company founded by Asher Wilf;
Phage Therapy Products That Have Been Developed:
1. PhageBioDerm Patch, licensed for sale in Georgia;(1) (What agency licensed this product?)
2. Phage therapy for dysentery, 1919, developed by D'Herelle;
3. Phage therapy for Salmmonella, developed by the Eliava Institute, available as late as 1989;
4. Phage therapy for anaerobic infections, such as gangrene, developed by the Eliava Institute in 1940's;
5. Spay cans filled with phages for Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Streptococcus pyogenes, and Proteus Vulgaris were caried as standard equipment by soldiers during the Georgian civil war in the 1990's. (1)
6. Phage preparations are available in many Russian cities, apparently over-the-counter, and some cities, such as Tolyatti rarelly use antibiotics, and rely almost exclusively on phage therapy; There was a "thriving market" for phage therapy products in Georgia after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and Eliava Institute only had the means to produce enough for the domestic market.
7. Anti-Listeria Phage product, developed by Intralytix, Inc., of Baltimore, MD, and has received an EPA permit to testing of the product in a food processing plant, but the product is forbidden to come into contact with any food; The company was hoping to market the product in 2003.
8. Anti-Salmonella Spray product to spray on eggs, developed by Intralytix, Inc. of Baltimore, MD.
Events:
1. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory First Banbury Meeting on Phage Therapy, held in November, 2002; (Were any subsequent meeting held?)
Bibliography and References:
American Medical Association (AMA), Report criticizing phage therapy, 1934; (1) (The AMA probably has a thick file on phage therapy in its huge Historical Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection. The subject index to the Guide for this collection shows "bacteriophages" as a subject innumbered entries 460 (19 file folders telling of several US researcher on phage therapy) and 562 (no mention of phage therapy, per se). There is no subject listed for "phage therapy", and D'Herelle's name is not in the name index under either D or H.)
Author?, title ? Archivum Immunolgia et Therapiae Experimentalis, pre-2002; article on the research at the IIET in Wroclaw, Poland, with 500 treated patients;
Author??. Title?? Journal, (early 1980's): This was a study of phages showing that mutations of E. coli were less frequent after phage therapy than after antibiotic therapy;
Boodman, Eric. “First phage therapy center in the U.S. signals growing acceptance” Statnews.com, June 21, 2018. Available at: Toshiba/Seagate EHD; Statnews.com website;
Fischetti, Vincent, et al. Title?? Nature, vol. ?? (August 22, 2002); Article tells how VF's team used a phage's lytic enzyme to kill the anthrax bacterium in a test tube;
Lewis, Sinclair. Arrowsmith. New York: Publisher??, 1925; A novel about a doctor who uses phage therapy to treat an outbreak of bubonic plague in the West Indies; (1)
Lewis, Sinclair. Arrowsmith. New York: Publisher??, 1925; A novel about a doctor who uses phage therapy to treat an outbreak of bubonic plague in the West Indies; (1)
Merril, Carl and Sankar Adhya. "Title of article???". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 93 (Date?, 1996), p. 3188 (1)
Sifferlin, Alexandra. “Superbugs Are Nearly Impossible to Fight. This Last-Resort Medical Treatment Offers Hope” Phage Therapy. Time Magazine, December 18, 2017. Available at: Toshiba/Seagate EHD; Time Magazine website;
Stent, Gunther. Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses, City: ?? Publisher??,1963. This is a classic text from the mainstream point of view, which wonders why phages are so effective in vitro, but ineffective in many cases in vivo.
Stone, Richard. "Stalin's Forgotten Cure". Science, vol. 298 (October 25, 2002), pp. 728-732.
Strathdee, Steffanie, Thomas Patterson, and Teresa Barker. The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir Hardcover. New Yor, NY: Hachette Books, 2019
Young, Ry, et al. Title??? Science, vol. ?? (June 22, 2001), p. 2326; Showed that one type of phage make peptides that act like penicillin, blocking cell wall synthesis in bacteria;