Phage Therapy and Phage-Mediated Biological Control 2021

Dear Colleagues,

Bacteriophages or phages – the viruses of bacteria – are the most abundant and potentially most diverse organisms on Earth. The majority of these viruses are lytic, meaning that, upon producing new phages, they not only kill but also lyse their bacterial hosts. Most phages target these hosts with high precision, resulting in easily predicted pharmacodynamics. Phages, in other words, have been evolving for roughly three billion years to be extremely effective at killing bacteria but, properly chosen, have little potential to do much else, such as displaying toxicity towards bodies or environments.

Given these properties, phages have at least a potential to serve as antibacterial agents both within and outside of medicine. They have in fact been used as antibacterials clinically for nearly 100 years, longer even than chemical antibiotics have been known to science. Indeed, they represent highly diverse, easily discovered, readily characterized, inexpensively produced, low-toxicity antibacterial agents. Were we to include bacteriophages among ‘antibiotics’ then there arguably would be no antibiotic crisis.

In this Special Issue we seek submissions broadly pertaining to the subject of phage therapy, the clinical or veterinary use of bacterial viruses as antibacterial “drugs”, or, more generally, the use of phages as antibacterial biological control agents.

Related publications:

1. Phage therapy pharmacology
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20214606
2. Ecology of Anti-Biofilm Agents I: Antibiotics versus Bacteriophages
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26371010
3. Ecology of Anti-Biofilm Agents II: Bacteriophage Exploitation and Biocontrol of Biofilm Bacteria
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26371011

Prof. Stephen T. Abedon
Dr. Diana R. Alves
Guest Editors

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