This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The mammalian gut microbiome teems with a delicate balance of bacteria and the viruses that keep them in check, called bacteriophages, or phages. Each bacterial species usually has its own set of phage partners.
When bad bacteria enter this ecosystem, there are typically no phages present, allowing them to cause mayhem. By the time the host is sick, it is too late for phages; they'll simply reach a balance with the bad bacteria. But what if the phages in the gut could prepare for the orally ingested pathogen and strike it down as it enters the gut, negating the need for a battle?
Associate professor and Blackwood Junior Faculty Fellow Bryan Hsu and his team recently demonstrated that this prophylactic approach, using an engineered, nonpathogenic E. coli bacterium, successfully protected mice from an oral Salmonella infection. Their work was published in Nature Microbiology. The team believes this is a step toward an additional weapon against illnesses.
"Eventually, in the future, this could be used to treat other diseases," said Rogerio A. Bataglioli, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biological Sciences and lead author of the study. "It's not about replacing antibiotics but having one more option on the shelf to fight infections." Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses of bacteria and do not infect humans or animals.
Hsu said phage therapy, the use of phages to treat bacterial infections, is particularly hard to make successful for treating intestinal pathogens. "It's challenging, especially in the gut, because phages and bacteria tend to coexist for long periods of time," said Hsu, an affiliate with Fralin Life Sciences Institute's Center for Emerging, Zoonotic, Arthropod-borne Pathogens. This coexistence makes establishing the high phage-to-bacteria ratio needed to treat intestinal infections hard to achieve.
"That's extremely challenging to achieve in your gut," Hsu said. "And then once you have a bacterial infection in your gut, a lot of times it's just not even accessible to phages. It's already hidden away in the mucosa or cells of your body; it's not just free-flowing to where the phages would be able to access the bacteria." To work around these impediments, the team engineered a nonpathogenic E. coli bacterium to carry a phage that only infects Salmonella.
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