Intravenous viruses are used to target deadly bacterium; dramatic case suggests potential alternative to failing antibiotics.
Scientists and physicians at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, working with colleagues at the U.S. Navy Medical Research Center – Biological Defense Research Directorate (NMRC–BDRD), Texas A&M University, a San Diego–based biotech and elsewhere, have successfully used an experimental therapy involving bacteriophages – viruses that target and consume specific strains of bacteria – to treat a patient near death from a multidrug–resistant bacterium.

The therapeutic approach was featured in an oral presentation at the Centennial Celebration of Bacteriophage Research at the Institute Pasteur in Paris by Biswajit Biswas, MD, one of the case study’s co–authors and chief of the phage division in the Department ?Genomics and Bioinformatics at NMRC–BDRD. April 27 is Human Phage Therapy Day, designated to mark 100 years of clinical research launched by Felix d’Herelle, a French microbiologist at Institute Pasteur who is credited with co–discovering bacteriophages with British bacteriologist Frederick Twort. Authors say the case study could be another catalyst to developing new remedies to the growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance, which the World Health Organization estimates will kill at least 50 million people per year by 2050. Based on the success of this case, in collaboration with NMRC, UC San Diego is exploring options for a new center to advance research and development of bacteriophage–based therapies.

“When it became clear that every antibiotic had failed, that Tom could die, we sought an emergency investigational new drug application from the FDA to try bacteriophages,” said lead author Robert “Chip” Schooley, MD, professor of medicine, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the UC San Diego School of Medicine and primary physician on the case.

“To our knowledge, he is the first patient in the United States with an overwhelming, systemic infection to be treated with this approach using intravenous bacteriophages. From being in a coma near death, he’s recovered well enough to go back to work. Of course, this is just one patient, one case. We don’t yet fully understand the potential – and limitations – of clinical bacteriophage therapy, but it’s an unprecedented and remarkable story, and given the global health threat of multidrug–resistant organisms, one that we should pursue.”