Why Phage Therapy May Fail - Editors in Conversation

Phage therapy has gained a lot of traction but the challenges created by this approach have not been properly assessed at a big scale. We often read about therapy successes on isolated cases but, rarely, we read or hear about failures. AAC recently published a case series of patients who failed phage therapy. Today, we will discuss this topic with the principal investigator on the research. Welcome to the Editors in Conversation.

Guest: Saima Aslam, MBBS. Director, Solid Organ Transplant Infectious Diseases Service, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego.

Article:

Topics discussed:

- Phage therapy as an approach for MDR bacteria.
- The challenges of phage therapies.
- Issues that can influence the success of phage therapy

Questions answered:

- How are we doing with phage therapy at this point?
- What are the challenges to deploy phage therapy in clinical settings?
- The 5 cases of failure of phage therapy in patients with LVADs summarized
- What factors did Dr. Aslam identify that were related with the failure?
- How do you develop neutralization against phages and how can you prevent it?
- Bacterial isolates with varying phage susceptibility, how can this be detected?
- What did Dr. Aslam learn?
- Future research

This episode of Editors in Conversation is brought to you by the Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy Journal and hosted by AAC Editor in Chief, Cesar Arias.

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