The History of Phage Therapy

Phage therapy uses viruses called bacteriophages to destroy specific bacteria. Scientists are hopeful that they could become a tool to fight antibiotic-resistant germs. In this video, Patrick Kelly guides you through the history of phage therapy's development.

☠️NONE OF THE INFORMATION IN THIS VIDEO SHOULD BE USED AS MEDICAL ADVICE OR OPINION. IT IS FOR GENERAL EDUCATION AND ENTERTAINMENT☠️

🔗 L I N K S 🔗

🔑 P A T R O N S 🔑
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📜 S O U R C E S 📜
Bacteriophage Therapy of Bacterial Infections: The Rediscovered Frontier (2021)

IMAGES
Intralytix Headquarters by Rayford Payne. CC-BY-SA 4.0

💻 C O N T A C T 💻

⌛T I M E S T A M P S ⌛
0:00 intro
0:48 What is a Phage
2:00 Ernest Hankin
5:18 Fredrick Twort
6:50 Felix d’Herelle
16:52 Phage Therapy in the Soviet Union
22:19 Phage Therapy in the USA
25:16 Challenges to phage therapy
28:09 Why are people hopeful?

#historyofmedicine #medicalhistory

[PatKellyTeaches]

CLARIFICATION: Towards the end of the video I say "There are some obstacles before we're all taking influenza-phage or something". The biggest of these obstacles is that influenza is caused by a virus, not a bacteria, so influenza-phage specifically can't exist. It was a throwaway line to end the section, but I should've been more careful with my words. Mea culpa.

[raynerhandrian]

Using viruses against superbugs sounds like using malware against scammers by sending it to their DM.

[JenSalvatore]

Look, us academics all know those papers get a little tedious. I appreciate an interlude of a turtle battle!!

[mwolkove]

My takeaway from this: scientists want to create nanobots to heal people, but we already have them.

[Myself]

Interesting enough in Russia phages are quite often used for curing pregnant women in child birth clinics as safe alternatives for antibiotics without any complications. There are preproduced cocktails of strains for many types of bacteria there - streptococcus, staphylococcus, even a supercoktails against intestine or std infections. And it works pretty well. I’m glad to know phage treatment idea becomes more popular.

[aidanclarke]

"Be patient"
I don't want to be a patient 😅

[Psychopatz]

So this might explains why some of the springs or even a well has some sort of healing properties in some folklores. They are literally teaming with bacteriophagies

[covcndl]

Antibiotics vs Bacteriophage is such an awesome example of why (for many reasons) collaboration is our collective key to success. imagine if the west and east had followed the science and the knowledge together. You know, instead of playing the game of whos got the bigger nuke

[ninadgadre]

Putting a little Indian context here, there is a long held Indian belief that waters of the Ganga have healing properties. There’s mythological reasons for this, Ganga being the biggest river systems in the region and being a literal mythological Goddess eminating from the matted locks of Shiva from up the Himalayas. But I can’t help but wonder if there were observational anecdotal accounts over the centuries that solidified the belief in the magical healing properties of the waters.

[thebets]

Why you dont have a million subscribers yet is beyond me, I am not in the medical field at all and yet I find your videos fascinating and informative. Thanks for the great content.

[capt.bart.roberts]

There may not be a capitalistic model for Phage Therapy. There certainly is a Public Health model for their use.

[sr]

As someone who is not supposed to take antibiotics for medical reasons, bacteriophages as treatment really excite me. I had to research them freshman year of undergrad, I watched a talk and the ones the presenter (Paul Turner, PhD) was discussing were really interesting. When applied to the target (antibiotic resistant) bacteria, they either killed them successfully or the bacteria developed resistance to the bacteriophages *and lost their antibiotic resistance*, in which case antibiotics could be used to kill them!

[jamie_alexander]

This is really interesting as someone who is currently trying to find new bacteriophages. I'm part of a research group in my college looking for phages in water sources, and I haven't been successful with my water sample but some others in the group have found evidence of phage activity.

[bloomtom]

I seriously appreciate the "D'Herelle Went Down to Georgia" gag.
Generally amazing video as always Patrick!

[NickHammer]

Your antibiotic series deserves an award. Ive rewatched every episode multiple times

[ekwah]

My partner had CF, and she died from complications caused by chronic bacterial lung infections several years ago at age 30.

Previously, the toxicity of the antibiotics she'd been treated with damaged her inner ears, causing balance issues, and the bacteria had become resistent to them as well.

Not long before she died, I came across bacteriophage therapy while researching potential solutions, and was planning to speak with her doctor about gathering a sample to send to a phage therapy center in Georgia where they develop custom phage cocktails to treat such cases, but during a routine hospital visit, she got pneumonia, and passed away after about two weeks in the ICU. It was a very painful and frustrating time.

I really hope more phage therapy research takes place in the U.S. soon, and it can be approved by the FDA, so that the lives of people with CF, and others who become infected with antibiotic resistent bacteria can be saved.

PS. The lung infection didn't cause her death directly. In the ICU, she was in an induced coma, hooked to a breathing machine and a dialysis machine while being pumped full of antibiotics. The dialysis machine was cleaning the toxins, largely caused by the antibiotics, from her blood continuously. It was too much for her heart to take after a while, so it stopped beating.

The buildup of toxicity and damage that can be caused by the long-term use of certain antibiotics is yet another reason to find alternatives. Some people also have allergic reactions to the only antibiotics that can treat their infections as well, so to me, it's imperitive that alternatives like phages are vetted for safety and brought to market in the U.S. as quickly as possible.

[jeffrando]

D’Herelle is a GOAT. Bro just said “nah Imma just be a scientist” and did it.

[EcclesiastesLiker-pyts]

The Pioneer of phage therapy ignoring good science because of personal beef and having his lab taken away despite genuine innovation is excellent proof of how science is easily corrupted by human pettiness. I wonder what instances of these problems we have but don't know about today.

[quinn]

My friend with cystic fibrosis is getting bacteriophages for her because she has treatment refractory burkholderia cepacia in her lungs and its her last options. The technology is super cool.

[siberx]

I think there's huge potential in bacteriophage therapy in the coming decades. The specificity was previously a major downside when it was difficult to determine exactly what was making somebody sick, but it's a tractable problem these days to perform fast-turnaround cultures and automated tests (including RNA/DNA testing to identify specific strains) to figure out what pathogen is in somebody and select an appropriate treatment from a prepared library. The technology for this simply didn't exist decades ago, so antibiotics won out.

Nowadays, the selectivity of bacteriophages means they'd be well-tolerated and would be much less likely to wreak havoc on the rest of the microbiome when administered. Since bacteriophages can also evolve alongside their bacterial hosts (unlike antibiotics), there's more of a chance of keeping ahead of resistance, too.