Viruses that could save millions of lives:
[...] Long overlooked in the West, bacteriophages or bacteria-eating viruses are now being used on some of the most difficult medical cases, including a Belgian woman who developed a life-threatening infection after being injured in the 2016 Brussels airport bombing.
[...] Phages have been known about for a century, but were largely forgotten and dismissed after antibiotics revolutionized medicine in the 1930s.
[...] While phages-based medicines cannot completely replace antibiotics, researchers say they have major pluses in being cheap, not having side-effects nor damaging organs or gut flora.
"We produce six standard phages that are of wide spectrum and can heal multiple infectious diseases," said Eliava Institute physician Lia Nadareishvili.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2022, @04:24AM (1 child)
The summary doesn't indicate, but the main exceptions are things like some e. Coli that release fatal amounts of toxins in tiny quantities. The pages can't reduce the number of bacteria sufficiently to fo the job. But for most other bacteria, they work great.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2022, @05:14PM
didn't them virus have two modes?
Mode A: infect bacteria, use bacteria internals to make more virus until X-plode, releasing virus.
Mode B: infect bacteria, incorporate virus-data into bacterium data, sit back and let "broken" bacterium multiply (thus also multiplying the virus-data).
bacteria infected with virus in B mode are the ones that make "funny things", like toxins.
secrit is to coax the "dormant" virus in B mode into A mode, which releases the bacterium from its "evil" existence?
but you didn't hear this here, no sir. be a good citizen and buy, eat and poop out those 'em antibiotics.
(Score: 3, Touché) by stretch611 on Thursday April 07 2022, @04:51AM (3 children)
Well, that explains why big pharma overlooks them
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2022, @05:23AM (2 children)
As someone that did research in this area, the main reason big pharma doesn't like them is that they are harder to patent. They don't want to sink the money into product development and getting FDA approval only to end up with something anyone can steal and get approved for a fraction of the cost.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2022, @12:19PM
Except that most of that isn't true. You can't patent them as they're life forms that haven't in any way been modified. There is basically no R&D involved with the phages and you wouldn't be able to reuse the treatments much anyways as there's constant evolution going on. And methods for isolating and delivering them are many decades old at this point.
There is a need to fix the approval process and that's going to happen, but the rest of this is ignorant BS .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2022, @05:39PM
The other reason is it's hard is because the old way of doing it was to get a bunch of viruses from some dubious sources (soil, sewage, etc) and see which samples kill the bacteria you want to kill.
The viruses weren't standardized for all/most treatments. So getting FDA approval for such stuff is harder. And if you think about it, the random viruses you got from sewage last week might kill the bacteria but they might also kill other stuff that you don't want killed... This is even if last month's batch was OK.
For similar reasons it's hard to get FDA approval for the poop transplant stuff (for treatment of various gastrointestinal problems). The poop varies from donor to donor. Some some tried to come up with standardized "poop" ( https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/01/15/169413851/robogut-makes-synthetic-poop-to-treat-stubborn-infections [npr.org] ).
Similarly now: "We produce six standard phages that are of wide spectrum". And that probably makes the big difference. Standard phages. Not a different bunch each treatment.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 07 2022, @07:40AM
'Hey, Ralph, you got any good viruses for sale?'
'I've always got the best stuff, you know that Pete. What are you interested in?'
'I'm thinking I might want to try that designer ebola virus.'
'You mean that North Korean Enhanced ebola?'
'Yeah, that's the one. Can you hook me up?'
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2022, @11:32AM
A History of Bacteriophage Production and Therapeutic Use in Russia
https://scfh.ru/en/papers/phages-attack/ [scfh.ru]
Read somewhere that US sanctions on Russia to limit medical access at the time, was the motivation for Phage research.
Wiki funfacts:
"It is estimated there are more than 10^31 bacteriophages on the planet, more than every other organism on Earth, including bacteria."
"Bacteriophages present in the environment can cause cheese to not ferment."
"Preliminary studies have indicated that common bacteriophage are found on average in 62% of healthy individuals,"
Alarm!
"Today, the consequences of opening a Pandora’s Box are upon us. The application of the CRISPR-Cas9 system to generate designer humans through “germ-line” gene editing of harvested human eggs would create permanent changes that continue through successive generations, and the fears over these actions may be comparable to the consequences of nuclear warfare and climate change."
Nahhhh...no one will ever do that! Never mind this alarm.