Alternatives to Traditional Antibiotics.

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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a significant public health concern, making infections more difficult to treat.

In today's article, we will be talking about promising alternatives to traditional antibiotics and the keys to accessing smart medicine.

The Keys to Accessing Smart Medicines

Rather than the elderly or chronically ill, people of all ages, including children, are in peril because antibiotics, once our go-to cure, are losing their effectiveness. At TAILΦR LABS, a non-profit research centre at Baylor College of Medicine, we are pioneering a promising alternative to traditional antibiotics - bacteriophages.

Why bacteriophage?

Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that kill bacteria. These viruses, like bacteria, exist ubiquitously, not only throughout Earth but within our bodies. They are so abundant they outnumber stars in the known universe, representing a boundless supply of potential antibiotics to combat bacterial infections.

The root of the antibiotic resistance crisis is change. The bacteria change, but our medicines do not. Classical antibiotics are chemically locked compounds. If we want to change them, it may take 10 years and up to $1 billion to bring to the market. But bacteria change fast; so fast that resistance can develop within months of an antibiotic’s introduction to the world. Enter phage. Unlike antibiotics, a phage uses the same mechanisms bacteria do to change, and fast. Phages are smart medicines that can be harnessed to adapt to bacteria in ways that not only kill resistant bacteria, but possibly prevent resistance altogether.

Tactical deployment

Phages have been used for more than a century, but only recently has technology and new knowledge emerged that permits scientists to harness their full bacterial busting power.

TAILΦR Labs was founded on the idea that phages, under the right conditions, can be customized as a personalized medicine to treat the most problematic of bacterial infections. However, this personalization limits treatment optimization, and we are only beginning to appreciate the intricate relationships between the phages, their bacterial targets, and the patients they treat. Professor Anthony Maresso, co-founder of TAILΦR, refers to this as “addressing the natural history of infection.” Each phage, Maresso says, has a personality that must be appreciated; know the phage and its target, and you begin to appreciate how to use them. Phiogen, a new biopharma start-up born of TAILΦR’s R&D efforts, will leverage new technologies to find the rarest of elite phages to address specific bacterial challenges.

The road ahead

While phages hold immense promise, we need the same support systems developed for traditional antibiotics, such as rapid diagnostic tools, sensitivity assays, and robust manufacturing pipelines. By discovering nature’s already wonderful solutions and enhancing their capabilities through technology, phage can become the next great generation of anti-infectives.

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