5 ms·

Phage therapy is super interesting, but there are a lot of technical problems. If I ever leave software engineering, it'll be to go back to mucking around with

by bhickey 10y ago

Phage therapy is super interesting, but there are a lot of technical problems. If I ever leave software engineering, it'll be to go back to mucking around with phage. Immune clearance: The immune system really enjoys soaking up phage. Blood titers drop stupidly fast. Maybe we could flood the colon with a phage-bearing solution to handle GI infections, but in general I'm really skeptical. There was a paper ~8 years ago describing serial passages in rabbits to enrich for immunocompatible phage. Don't know if further work has been done here. Specificity: Phage really, really like their hosts. I had a strain of Phi X174 in lab that would simply never infect wild type E coli. To deploy phage effectively, you need to culture whatever it is that you're after. Next you'd want to infect the pathogen in culture and pass your phage for O(many) generations. A lot of human pathogens are just miserable to grow. Efficacy: Antibiotics are just better at killing bacteria (resistance aside.) Regulatory: You'd need to convince the FDA to approve a viral cocktail that is potentially going to kill the patient through anaphylaxis.

Fomite 10y ago
Indeed, the name of one of the major hospital-acquired human pathogens, Clostridium difficile, literally means "Clostridium pain in my ass to culture".
- bhickey 10y ago
  I once tried to grow magnetotactic bacteria. For the growth media, you had to prepare a witch's brew of unusual chemicals which sent me on a goose hunt around a few friendly chem labs. The protocol called for making a couple of litres; smaller quantities would just exacerbate measurement errors. After cooking it up, you were supposed to add 2mL to the growth media and incubate the whole mess for four weeks. Needless to say, I could never get them to grow. Edit: I found the protocol! NTA 1.5g MgSO4 3.0g MnSO4 0.5g NaCl 1.5g FeSO4 0.1g CaCl2 0.1g CoSO4 0.1g ZnSO4 0.1g CuSO4 0.025g AlK(SO4)2 0.01g H3BO3 0.01g Na2MoO4 0.4g NiCl2 0.01g Phew. Did I mention: it was an anaerobe? Flushing an exotic growth media with nitrogen is a dull way to spend a Friday afternoon.

by bhickey 10y ago

Fomite 10y ago

Indeed, the name of one of the major hospital-acquired human pathogens, Clostridium difficile, literally means "Clostridium pain in my ass to culture".

bhickey 10y ago
I once tried to grow magnetotactic bacteria. For the growth media, you had to prepare a witch's brew of unusual chemicals which sent me on a goose hunt around a few friendly chem labs. The protocol called for making a couple of litres; smaller quantities would just exacerbate measurement errors. After cooking it up, you were supposed to add 2mL to the growth media and incubate the whole mess for four weeks. Needless to say, I could never get them to grow. Edit: I found the protocol! NTA 1.5g MgSO4 3.0g MnSO4 0.5g NaCl 1.5g FeSO4 0.1g CaCl2 0.1g CoSO4 0.1g ZnSO4 0.1g CuSO4 0.025g AlK(SO4)2 0.01g H3BO3 0.01g Na2MoO4 0.4g NiCl2 0.01g Phew. Did I mention: it was an anaerobe? Flushing an exotic growth media with nitrogen is a dull way to spend a Friday afternoon.