The source covers the history and journey of phage therapy to the present. It presents the rise of phages to combat bacterial infections and the rise of penicillin which took over as the main treatment after some time. The article frames how phage therapy fell out of favor in Western medicine due to the lack of understanding of the treatment over the antibiotics at the time. As time passed, the practice of antibiotics got normalized and bacteria grew resistant to the antibiotics. These new antibiotic-resistant bacteria posed an issue as antibiotics were limited. When the options run out for a bacterial infection, a simple infection would turn life-threatening like for Patterson as mentioned in the article. Despite case studies such as Patterson’s, the issue of the treatment’s development lies in the lack of clinical trials as it is the bone of therapeutic development in the US. Another issue involves the effectiveness of the treatment as phages do not aim to kill bacteria, they just happen to cause bacterial cells to undergo lysis in some phages. The other phages integrate their genome into the bacteria which may cause more damage. The issue presents itself as the process of identifying phages is lengthy as a certain phage will only match a specific bacteria. Dispute this difficulty, there are developing products that target broader ranges. Another complication is the possibility of bacterial phage resistance which needs to be monitored, however, the resistance to phage does increase the susceptibility to antibiotics. The future of phage therapy is uncertain but the FDA is on board with the idea and the NIH awarded 2.5 million to 12 institutes to study the treatment worldwide. Developments of phages with CRISPR-Cas3 may allow for even greater bacterial killing potential.
