Why Phage Therapy May Fail

Phage therapy has gained a lot of traction but the challenges created by this approach have not been properly assessed at a big scale. We often read about therapy successes on isolated cases but, rarely, we read or hear about failures. AAC recently published a case series of patients who failed phage therapy. Today, we will discuss this topic with the principal investigator on the research.

Topics discussed:

• Phage therapy as an approach for MDR bacteria.
• The challenges of phage therapies.
• Issues that can influence the success of phage therapy

Guest:

• Saima Aslam, MBBS. Director, Solid Organ Transplant Infectious Diseases Service, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego.

Article:

Pseudomonas aeruginosa ventricular assist device infections: findings from ineffective phage therapies in five cases https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/aac.01728-23

Questions Answered:

• How are we doing with phage therapy at this point?
• What are the challenges to deploy phage therapy in clinical settings?
• The 5 cases of failure of phage therapy in patients with LVADs summarized
• What factors did Dr. Aslam identify that were related with the failure?
• How do you develop neutralization against phages and how can you prevent it?  
• Bacterial isolates with varying phage susceptibility, how can this be detected?
• What did Dr. Aslam learn?
• Future research

This episode is brought to you by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy journal available at aac.asm.org. If you plan to publish in AAC, ASM Members get up to 50% off publishing fees. Visit asm.org/membership to sign up.

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