Phage-inspired strategies to combat antibacterial resistance

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in clinically priority pathogensis now a major threat to public health worldwide. Phages are bacterial parasites that efficiently infect or kill specific strains and represent the most abundant biological entities on earth, showing great attraction as potential antibacterial therapeutics in combating AMR. This review provides a summary of phage-inspired strategies to combat AMR. We firstly cover the phage diversity, and then explain the biological principles of phage therapy that support the use of phages in the post-antimicrobial era. Furthermore, we state the versatility methods of phage therapy both from direct access as well as collateral access. Among the direct access approaches, we discuss the use of phage cocktail therapy, phage-encoded endolysins and the bioengineering for function improvement of used phages or endolysins. On the other hand, we introduce the collateral access, including the phages antimicrobial immunity combined therapy and phage-based novel antibacterial mimic molecules. Nowadays, more and more talented and enthusiastic scientist, doctors, pharmacists, media, authorities, and industry are promoting the progress of phage therapy, and proposed more phages-inspired strategy to make them more tractable to combat AMR and benefit more people, more animal and diverse environment in “one health” framework.

Keywords:

• antimicrobial resistance(AMR)
• phage therapy (PT)
• direct access PT strategy
• collateral access PT strategy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (32102717), Natural Science Foundation of the Higher Education Institutions of Jiangsu Province, China (21KJB230010), Jiangsu Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Fund (CX(21)2010), Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX22_3550). A Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), 111 Project (D18007).