Potential of phage depolymerase for the treatment of bacterial biofilms

ABSTRACT

Resistance of bacteria to antibiotics is a major concern in medicine and veterinary science. The bacterial biofilm structures not only prevent the penetration of drugs into cells within the biofilm’s interior but also aid in evasion of the host immune system. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop novel therapeutic approaches against bacterial biofilms. One potential strategy to counter biofilms is to use phage depolymerases that degrade the matrix structure of the bacteria and enable access to bacterial cells. This review mainly discusses the methods by which phage depolymerases enhance the efficacy of the human immune system and the therapeutic applications of some phage depolymerases, such as single phage depolymerase application, combined therapy with phage depolymerase and antibiotics, and phage depolymerase cocktails, for treating bacterial biofilms. This review also summarizes the relationship between bacterial biofilms and antibiotic resistance.

KEYWORDS:

• Phage
• depolymerase
• bacteria
• biofilm
• polysaccharide
• treatment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81802056), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019M651215), the Scientific Research Fundation of the Education Department of Jilin Province (No. JJKH20231216KJ) and the Achievement Transformation Project of the First Hospital of Jilin University (No. JDYYZH-2022006, No. JDYY2021-A0012, No. yjs2022007 and No. 2020-ZL-05).