Phage therapy as an alternative to infections with antibiotic-resistant bacteria

The increasing resistance of bacteria to all available antibiotics constitutes one of the greatest challenges to medicine today. In fact, some experts believe that we are entering a pre-antibiotic era. The growing problem of antibiotic resistance has revived interest in the potential use of bacteriophages (bacterial viruses) for treating drug-resistant infections. In recent years, most leading biomedical journals have published reviews addressing this issue. This article presents in some detail an outline of the developments as well as the current status of phage therapy. As recently pointed out by Nature Medicine, our phage clinic is the only phage therapy centre offering official treatment in the European Union (with all the necessary conditions, including institutional review board approvals, informed consent, and insurance). Our activities and most recent publications are presented on our phage website: http://www.iitd.pan.wroc.pl/phages/phages.html.