Characterizing the response of multidrug-resistant <i>Klebsiella pneumoniae</i> species to the application of a phage cocktail

Abstract

Project Summary: The application of bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections is known as phage therapy, which takes advantage of bacteriophage’s natural ability to infect and lyse bacterial hosts. Phages have been shaped by billions of years of evolution to be highly specialized deliverers of bactericidal agents to the cytoplasm of their target bacteria. Ever since discovery of bacteriophages in 1915, phage therapy was recognized as a potentially powerful tool for eliminating bacterial infections. The effectiveness of phage therapy can be increased by creating a mixture of multiple phages to target a wider variety of bacterial strains. Furthermore, phage therapy has many advantages over antibiotics. For example, phages replicate in vivo, so a smaller effective dose can be administered. Phages will also stop reproducing once the target bacteria is destroyed. Much of the evidence strongly shows that, appropriately administered, phage therapy is effective for treatment of bacterial infectious diseases, especially those caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria. The worldwide spread of Klebsiella pneumoniae spp., which is resistance to a variety of antibiotics, threatens to revert modern medicine to a pre-antibiotic era. Infections caused by drug-resistant K. pneumoniae spp. are life threatening because of our limited ability to treat the associated disease symptoms. As a result, infections due to multidrug resistant K. pneumoniae spp. have an extremely high mortality rate. The design of a phage cocktail with potential therapeutic application against multidrug-resistant K. pneumoniae spp. may enable us to respond to a rapidly emerging generation of multidrug-resistant bacterial species.