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Gene Engineered Phage Therapy Saves Teen from Superbug

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 09 2019, @09:36PM   
from the the-enemy-of-my-enemy dept.

RandomFactor writes:

Genetically engineered phage therapy has rescued a teenager on the brink of death

Isabelle Holdaway received a lung transplant and in the process picked up an antibiotic-resistant infection.
She was sent home from the hospital underweight, with liver failure, and with skin lesions from the infection. Her survival odds were "less than 1%."

Her consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London worked with a team at the University of Pittsburgh to develop an untested phage therapy. This treatment used a cocktail of three phages: viruses that solely attack and kill bacteria. Two of the three phages, selected from a library of more more than 10,000 kept at the University of Pittsburgh, had been genetically engineered to be better at attacking the bacteria. The therapy was injected into her blood stream twice daily and applied to the lesions on her skin, according to Nature Medicine.

With this therapy, which is still ongoing, "virtually all her lesions have cleared." Her treatment team is planning to add a fourth phage to the treatment in hopes of clearing the infection completely.

The article notes this is a deeply personalized therapy approach and to be careful extrapolating from a single case study. Still, with the rise in antiobiotic resistance in bacteria in recent years, using viruses to kill superbugs has been getting attention.

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Original Submission

• This one's been around for a long time -- USSR. This one's been around for a long time -- USSR. (Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday May 09 2019, @10:48PM (1 child)

  by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Thursday May 09 2019, @10:48PM (#841582) Homepage Journal

  And, many places. Before anyone knew about Penicillin, they did, very successfully, the Phage Therapy. Where they take a virus that's been around for millions or billions of years. And it knocks the germs right out. And now, the Superbugs are going around. You take your Penicillin, you're still very sick. So they're looking into, how about going back to the Phage Therapy. And hopefully it's going to be even stronger now. Because they have Designer Genes and they have Computer. Isabelle, we are praying for you. And for all the folks with these very tough Superbugs. Knowing, it could be us someday. It could be us. We're praying it's not us -- and wearing Rubbers to make sure!

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• Re:This one's been around for a long time -- USSR. (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @02:39AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @02:39AM (#841675)

  You sick.

  Parent