Recent advances in phage therapy for pharmaceutical applications

Antibiotic resistance poses a significant challenge for the treatment of infections. The development of a new formulation containing bacteriophages in the treatment of infections have many advantages over antibiotic therapy. While antibiotics can affect both target and beneficial bacteria, phages can be interacted only with the target bacteria. Furthermore, since phages affect the target cell, they do not cause side effects in other cells. In order to ensure therapeutic efficacy in antibiotic treatment, long-term drug use at a certain dose is also required. In addition to various combinations and formulation strategies, bacteriophage therapy is in infancy and becoming more popular as a successful approach to treat infections. The viability of phage virions was influenced by numerous factors as pH, temperatures, ionic strength and pharmaceutical conditions. Numerous formulations based on nanotechnology, including nanoparticles, vesicular systems, carbon nanotubes, nanofibers, microneedles, 3 dimensional (3D) formulations have recently been shown to be successful in overcoming the aforementioned difficulties. In this review, all of these current papers were compiled and mentioned about the use of bacteriophage-based conventional drug delivery systems (liquid, nanosuspension, hydrogels, film formulation) and novel drug delivery systems, which may pave new way to obtain the effective treatment of infections by multidrug-resistant E. coli, S. aureus and other bacteria.