Why Phage Therapy May Fail

Editors in Conversation

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

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