Antibiotic resistance is a critical problem in medicine, whereby pathogenic bacteria become able to overcome medicinal treatments One approach to fighting antibiotic resistance is the use of bacteriophages (“phages”), viruses that attack bacteria, a strategy known as “phage therapy”. Phages can target specific bacteria, thereby avoiding the problem of antibiotics that kill a wide spectrum of bacteria, including neutral or beneficial bacteria. Phages have been used as antibiotics for a century, but suffer from two limitations: a) bacteria acquire phage resistance; and b) phage effects in the test tube were observed to differ from their effects in the body. Thus, we have isolated a bacteriophage against a human pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium and have fully characterized its growth and annotated its genome. Then, we tested its ability to mitigate Salmonella infection in C. elegans.
Support or Funding Information
Research supported by New Hampshire- INBRE through an Institutional Development Award (IDeA), P20GM103506, from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the NIH.
