ANTIBIOTICS ARE vital to modern medicine. Their ability to kill bacteria without harming the patient has saved billions of lives directly and made everything from caesarean sections to chemotherapy much safer. Life expectancy would drop by a third if they did not exist. But after decades of overuse their powers are fading. Some bacteria have evolved resistance, creating a growing army of “superbugs” against which there is no effective treatment. Antimicrobial resistance is expected to kill 10m people a year by 2050, up from around 1m in 2019.
Microbiologists have known for decades that disease-causing bacteria can suffer from illnesses of their own. They are susceptible to attack by bacteriophages (“phages” for short): specialised viruses that infect bacteria, and often kill them.
The trouble with phages is that comparatively little is known about them. After the discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928, they were largely ignored in the West. Only the Soviet Union, powered by research and production facilities in Georgia, continued to use them. Given the gravity of the antibiotic-resistance problem, it would be a good idea to find out more.
A century ago, phages were the most promising tool in the antibacterial arsenal. Felix d’Herelle, a microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, used them to treat the first patient in 1919, after downing a dose himself to ensure they had no harmful effects. One of his colleagues was a young Georgian scientist named George Eliava, who returned home to found the institute that now bears his name.
But with the discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928, phages fell from favour. Production of penicillin surged during the second world war, crowding the phages out.
The first and so far only clinical trial on phages in Britain ended in 2009, concluding they were both safe and effective against an ear infection.
Although Dendritic cells were discovered in the 19th century, it was only at the beginning of the 21st century that their role in adaptive immunity was discovered. Ralph M. Steinman understood that the primed dendritic cells were capable of detecting and destroying malignant cancer cells in the body and for his work he was awarded the Nobel prize in Medicine in 2011.
Like macrophages and neutrophils, dendritic cells (DCs) are considered professional phagocytes. Even if the three cell types phagocytose parasites, bacteria, cell debris, or even intact cells very efficiently, the functional outcomes of the phagocytic event are quite different.
ATP stands for adenosine triphosphate, and it is the form of energy our body uses to fuel all the biological processes that keep us alive.
Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that specifically target bacteria. Phage therapy involves using phages to treat bacterial infections. Phages are everywhere. From the soil to our guts, there are thousands of different types.31 Aug 2022
Probiophage Dairy Free is a specialised bacteriophage formulation combining four types of phages, Proprietary Blend (Lactobacillus acidophilus, bifidobacterium bifidum, bifidobacterium longum, lactobacillus rhamnosus, bifidobacterium breve, lactobacillus casei, streptococcus thermophilus), PrePhage Bacteriophage Prebiotic Blend (LH01-Myoviridae, LL5-Siphoviridae, T4D-Myoviridae, LL12-Myoviridae).
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