Are Phages the Wave of the Future? Using Viruses to Treat Bacterial Diseases

Researchers with the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania used a genetically modified bacteriophage—a type of virus that infects bacteria—to successfully treat 15-year-old Isabelle Carnell-Holdaway, a British girl with cystic fibrosis who had been fighting a drug-resistant Mycobacterium abscessus infection half her life. Her physician, Helen Spencer, with London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, was out of options and reached out to Graham Hatfull at U of P. Their approach appeared to work, although they caution that because it was outside a controlled clinical trial, there may be other factors to their patient-specific cocktail. She continues to receive the treatments, which haven’t cured the infection, but appears to have it under control. The research was published in the journal Nature Medicine. Earlier this year, Ella Balasa, a 26-year-old from Richmond, Virginia, made the news when she was apparently successfully treated for a lung infection using a bacteriophage. Balasa has cystic fibrosis, which she was diagnosed with at the age of one year.