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I love this. Previously there was a story about using viruses in order to combat drug resistant bacteria[0]. The more tools we have to kill them off, the bett

I love this. Previously there was a story about using viruses in order to combat drug resistant bacteria[0]. The more tools we have to kill them off, the better. It's only tangentially related but my feeling is that we've barely scraped what's possible with viral, bacterial and protein engineering though. I can't wait until we start treating them much like we treat transistors and circuits. The building blocks are even nearly the same size at this point. [0]https://mashable.com/2018/03/11/bacteriophage-viruses-from-pond-treat-antibiotic-resistant-bacteria/#7at.qoFsaGqU https://mashable.com/2018/03/11/bacteriophage-viruses-from-p...

andreygrehov 8y ago
Came here to write about this. Phage therapy[0] is an extremely interesting topic and there are a number of startups working in this direction. It's funny, but in Eastern Europe (Georgia, Russia, Poland, etc.) phage therapy is used broadly for many years, whereas US is just catching up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy
- xenadu02 8y ago
  People (in the west) have been writing about phage therapy and how revolutionary it will be for 20 years now. It still hasn't arrived. Phage therapy requires determining which bacteria is causing the disease, then having phages on-hand suitable for that specific bacteria (or some system to culture them). Using the "wrong" phages is useless and there are hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of strains. Bacteria also evolve phage resistance and phages themselves evolve to target other harmless bacteria in cases where their targets are eradicated. Phage therapy will probably end up being one component of a multi-prong strategy but it is hardly a replacement for antibiotics.
  - andreygrehov 8y ago
    > Phage therapy requires determining which bacteria is causing the disease That's exactly what they do in Eastern Europe. They work with each patient individually. Here is a good read [0]. > A few weeks later, the Georgian doctors called Rose with good news: They would be able to design a concoction of phages to treat Rachel’s infections. After convincing Rachel’s doctor to write a prescription for the viruses (so they could cross the U.S. border), Rose paid the Georgian clinic $800 for a three-month supply. She was surprised that phages were so inexpensive; in contrast, her insurance company was forking over roughly $14,000 a month for Rachel’s antibiotics. [0] https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/mail-order-viruses-are-the-new-antibiotics https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/mail-order-viruses-a...
    - xenadu02 8y ago
      > A few weeks later A huge number of infections would lead to death within a few weeks. Critical ones within days or hours. I'm not saying we shouldn't explore phage therapy. I'm saying it isn't the magic bullet supporters have been promising for 20 years. It isn't like western medicine is ignoring phages, there are just a lot of issues to work out.
- superbug_slayer 8y ago
  I work in this area after curing my husband of a life-threatening superbug with IV phage therapy. That case has re-invigorated phage therapy in the West and there are several clinical trials that will start in 2019. Even if phage therapy isn't shown efficacious on its own, there is growing evidence of synergy between phage and antibiotics that itself is a game-changer. My husband and I wrote a book about our story which covers the strange history of phage therapy: ThePerfectPredator.com

andreygrehov 8y ago

Came here to write about this. Phage therapy[0] is an extremely interesting topic and there are a number of startups working in this direction. It's funny, but in Eastern Europe (Georgia, Russia, Poland, etc.) phage therapy is used broadly for many years, whereas US is just catching up. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy

xenadu02 8y ago
People (in the west) have been writing about phage therapy and how revolutionary it will be for 20 years now. It still hasn't arrived. Phage therapy requires determining which bacteria is causing the disease, then having phages on-hand suitable for that specific bacteria (or some system to culture them). Using the "wrong" phages is useless and there are hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of strains. Bacteria also evolve phage resistance and phages themselves evolve to target other harmless bacteria in cases where their targets are eradicated. Phage therapy will probably end up being one component of a multi-prong strategy but it is hardly a replacement for antibiotics.
- andreygrehov 8y ago
  > Phage therapy requires determining which bacteria is causing the disease That's exactly what they do in Eastern Europe. They work with each patient individually. Here is a good read [0]. > A few weeks later, the Georgian doctors called Rose with good news: They would be able to design a concoction of phages to treat Rachel’s infections. After convincing Rachel’s doctor to write a prescription for the viruses (so they could cross the U.S. border), Rose paid the Georgian clinic $800 for a three-month supply. She was surprised that phages were so inexpensive; in contrast, her insurance company was forking over roughly $14,000 a month for Rachel’s antibiotics. [0] https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/mail-order-viruses-are-the-new-antibiotics https://www.buzzfeed.com/azeenghorayshi/mail-order-viruses-a...
  - xenadu02 8y ago
    > A few weeks later A huge number of infections would lead to death within a few weeks. Critical ones within days or hours. I'm not saying we shouldn't explore phage therapy. I'm saying it isn't the magic bullet supporters have been promising for 20 years. It isn't like western medicine is ignoring phages, there are just a lot of issues to work out.
superbug_slayer 8y ago
I work in this area after curing my husband of a life-threatening superbug with IV phage therapy. That case has re-invigorated phage therapy in the West and there are several clinical trials that will start in 2019. Even if phage therapy isn't shown efficacious on its own, there is growing evidence of synergy between phage and antibiotics that itself is a game-changer. My husband and I wrote a book about our story which covers the strange history of phage therapy: ThePerfectPredator.com