Bacteriophages will help antibiotics
Timothy Lu, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and James Collins, a professor at Boston University, have performed a series of experiments that may lead to the emergence of a new method of combating bacterial infections. The results are presented in their article, which appeared on the website of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on March 2.
The authors of the article genetically modified the bacteriophage virus M13 and forced it, upon penetration into the cell, to produce the bacterial protein lexA3. This protein turns off the bacterium's ability to repair DNA, making it more susceptible to antibiotic molecules that damage bacterial DNA.
The experimenters tested the effect of the new phage in combination with ofloxacin, a powerful antibiotic from the family of fluoroquinolones (it also includes such well-known drugs as cefloxacin and ciprofloxacin). Mice infected with E. coli who received such combination therapy survived in 80% of cases – against twenty percent, which could be achieved with treatment with ofloxacin alone.
Lu and Collins also found that the genetically engineered bacteriophage significantly increases the effectiveness of antibacterial drugs from the beta-lactam group (these are penicillins and cephalosporins) and aminoglycosides (streptomycin, neomycin, amikacin and gentamicin).
Collins is confident that the combination of antibiotics with therapy with viruses that do not kill, but only weaken pathogenic bacteria, can significantly alleviate the fate of many patients in the future.
Nevertheless, in order to introduce the technology into mass use, it is necessary to overcome a number of difficulties: either to learn how to select viruses that can both infect dangerous bacteria and avoid rapid destruction by the immune system of each individual patient, or to develop technologies for creating "cocktails" of genetically modified bacteriophage viruses.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru10.03.2009