[FRIAM] The Virtuous Side of Viruses

[glen ep ropella]

The Virtuous Side of Viruses
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-virtuous-side-of-viruses/

Smmry's TL;DR <https://smmry.com/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-virtuous-side-of-viruses/#&SM_LENGTH=7>:
> Phage therapy has long been used in eastern Europe to battle infections, but after modern antibiotics arrived in the 1940s, it was largely ignored.
> 
> With modern techniques, virologists can precisely match just the right phages to a specific strain of superbug-with sometimes astonishing results.
> 
> Tom Patterson, for example, was resurrected from an overwhelming Iraqibacter infection after his wife, Steffanie Strathdee, an infectious disease epidemiologist, scoured the world for phages that might save him.
> 
> Strathdee has since co-founded U.C.S.D.'s Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics.
> 
> In Patterson's case, nine different phages were used in various cocktails injected into his bloodstream multiple times a day over 18 weeks.
> 
> After multiplying inside a bacterium, phages use lysins to break through the cell wall of their host, instantly killing it.
> 
> A purified lysin made from a phage gene isolated in Fischetti's lab was tested in a phase 2 trial with 116 patients suffering from staph infections of the blood or heart, including 43 with MRSA strains.

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glen ep ropella 971-599-3737