Title: Bringing phage biology out-of-the shadow and into the bedside: when will modern medicine use this ally virus in the battle against superbugs

Abstract:

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global crisis that threatens a century of progress in medicine, with alarming levels of resistance being reported by countries of all income levels. The spread of AMR organisms results in common diseases becoming untreatable, and lifesaving medical procedures riskier to perform.  Healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) carry the highest-burden compared to all other infectious diseases including HIV, tuberculosis, and influenza.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the U.S. each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result of it. Although bacteriophage (‘phage’) therapy was discovered about a century ago, the advancement of antibiotics left this forgotten cure to be well-studied only behind the “iron curtains” of the former Soviet Union. The George Eliava Institute physicians have been treating Georgians and patients from other countries successfully for decades.  Even though AMR bacterial infections are of great concern globally, it wasn’t until 2016 that the first American patient received intravenous phage therapy in American soil. After approved for an emergency investigational new drug (eIND) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), doctors from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) were allowed to inject trillions of live viruses (‘phage’)  in a comatose patient who suffered from pancreatitis caused by one of the worst “superbugs”: Acinetobacter baumannii. Facing life-threatening sepsis, breathing with the help of a ventilator, this patient started to go into multiple organ failure. His multidrug-resistant bacteria was not responding to any antibiotic including colistin until his life-saving phage therapy infusion. Since then, this “alternative cure” is getting more attention and other successful compassionate-use cases in the U.S. followed, opening the doors for phage therapy again.  Recently, the U.S.  started its first clinical trials using phage therapy to treat AMR urinary tract infection caused by E. coli. Phage therapy has demonstrated its potential use in combination with antibiotics, eliciting the mechanism of synergy, allowing antibiotics to work again. Phage therapy allows for personalized medicine and specifically targets the microorganism causing the infection, leaving the good microbiome untouched. In times of this in which we live amidst the biggest pandemic of human history, it is important to look at evolutionary biology and how “mother-nature” controls its biosphere. These phages are not only efficient in treating bacterial infections, but it can be used to address the use of antibiotics in livestock and pesticides in agriculture. Phage biology is an understudied tool that allows for the development of rapid-test diagnosis, recombination, cloning, development of vaccine platform, environmental bioremediation, phage-based gene therapy among other possibilities in humans, and veterinarian medicine.

Biography:

Andrea Borns, microbiologist and respiratory therapist who holds a Master’s of Public Health is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of ZEN Clinical & Bioscience. ZEN is a newly-formed consulting and laboratory client-driven research and development (R&D) company in the field of bacteriophage therapy and phage biotechnology to address emerging infectious and neglected tropical diseases. Originally from Brazil, Andrea started her career in Biomedical Sciences and was involved in HIV/AIDS research during the late ’90s in Rio de Janeiro. She is also a former Assistant Professor and Director of Clinical Education at the University of the District of Columbia, USA, where she worked closely with lung diseases, critical care, and mechanical ventilation before her comeback to the bench. Working on the bedside managing and treating cystic fibrosis and ventilator-associated pneumonia patients who lost their lives to superbugs, inspire her to leave Academia and the hospital environment to work in basic science. Andrea worked as a microbiologist at American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) and the Biodefense & Emerging Infection Resource (BEI), and as a research technician at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). Passionate about basic science, Andrea is interested in bringing the knowledge of phage biology from the bench to the bedside so it can benefit patients.