Bacteriophages and Their Derivatives as Biotherapeutic Agents in Disease Prevention and Treatment

Abstract

The application of bacteriophages for the elimination of pathogenic bacteria has received significantly increased attention worldwide in the past decade. This is borne out by the increasing prevalence of bacteriophage-specific conferences highlighting significant and diverse advances in the exploitation of bacteriophages. While bacteriophage therapy has been associated with the Former Soviet Union historically, since the 1990s, it has been widely and enthusiastically adopted as a research topic in Western countries. This has been justified by the increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance in many prominent human pathogenic bacteria. Discussion of the therapeutic aspects of bacteriophages in this review will include the uses of whole phages as antibacterials and will also describe studies on the applications of purified phage-derived peptidoglycan hydrolases, which do not have the constraint of limited bacterial host-range often observed with whole phages.

Bacteriophages and bacteriophage-derived endolysins as potential therapeutics to combat Gram-positive spore forming bacteria

“…The cleavage site is within or between the sugar or peptide moieties of peptidoglycan (Elbreki et al . ). Summaries on phage‐derived endolysins for Bacillus and Clostridium can be found in Tables and respectively.…”

“…However, endolysins are targeted towards highly conserved features of the bacterial cell surface and the development of such resistance would require a fundamental alteration of peptidoglycan architecture (Elbreki et al . ). Although attempts have been made to develop this type of resistance in vitro (Briers et al .…”

Phage therapy: present and future

“…The PALs are endolysins, or murein hydrolases, i.e., enzymes which promote cleaving the bacterial cell wall peptidoglycan. Their action occurs only in the presence of the second factor, i.e., choline membrane protein which forms pores in the plasma membrane and provides endolysin with an access to bacterial cells [20]. The efficiency of SPZ7 endolysin against gram-negative bacteria was shown in [21].…”

“…This is known as the restriction-modification (R-M) system. One more way to prevent the development of an infection is an abortive infection when the host bacterium dies and the virus does not spread any further in a population of susceptible strains [20].…”

Effect of a bacteriophage cocktail in combination with modified atmosphere packaging in controlling Listeria monocytogenes on fresh-cut spinach

“…One such novel approach is the use of lytic bacteriophages (phages) to selectively control bacterial pathogens on fresh produce. Phages are viruses that can be extremely specific for bacterial strains (Elbreki et al, 2014) and interact with and infect their respective host strains. They are extremely diverse and abundant; thus, lytic phages present a promising natural approach in controlling enteric pathogenic bacteria on produce.…”