THE BACTERIA-EATING VIRUSES HELPING TO TACKLE A GLOBAL THREAT

Antibiotic resistant bacteria are spreading across the globe at an alarming rate, claiming a few hundred thousand lives a year. This number is expected to rise drastically by 2050 and the problem needs urgent action from government and society.

Interdisciplinary research funded by IfLS Higher Education Innovation Funds (HEIF) and Wessex Medical Research and led by Dr Franklin Nobrega, has been exploring how a phage-based strategy could play a part in tackling this global threat.

Franklin, who is Associate Professor in Microbiology, said: “We are using bacteriophages (viruses that attack bacteria) to reactivate antibiotics to clear bacterial infections.

“To kill bacteria, bacteriophages, (phages for short), attach to specific structures on the surface of the bacterial cell. To try to prevent this, bacteria often mutate these structures. Luckily for us, these surface structures are frequently involved in antibiotic resistance, and their mutation will make the bacteria lose their ability to resist antibiotics.

“By combining bacteriophages and antibiotics, we can create a broadly applicable, costeffective, and safe treatment against many kinds of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, giving new life to old antibiotics.”

The project involved biological scientists and clinicians, and colleagues from Winchester School of Art. The latter’s expertise in public engagement enabled the team to better understand public misgivings about virusbased treatments which were exacerbated by the Coronavirus pandemic, and to develop educational materials.

Together they developed the first Phage Therapy Experimental Medicine programme in the UK as part of the new NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) Infection Theme.

Building on this research, Franklin’s Microbial Interactions Lab is compiling a biobank of bacterial viruses available free to scientists to further phage research, and running citizen science projects to raise public awareness of AMR and antibiotic alternatives, in preparation for their more widespread introduction.

Significant obstacles to the use of phage-based therapies in clinics remain. They have never been licensed for therapeutic use in the UK, except as ‘compassionate’ treatments of last resort in isolated cases, and the pharmaceutical industry is yet to invest in their manufacture to UK standards, severely limiting their use in clinical trials.

January 2024 saw a notable step forward, however. Following a 2023 call for evidence, the UK Parliamentary Science, Innovation and Technology Committee published its first report on bacteriophages. It calls on the Government ‘to make a definitive and positive statement on the role of phages in the national approach to anti-microbial resistance, which is important in research funding decisions and for private investment in commercial phages.’

Franklin is now working on a Policy Brief, covering both phage-therapy development and the public engagement required to reduce reliance on antibiotics. He has recently secured Research England Participatory Research Funding to begin clinical trials.

This research has received funding from the University of Southampton Institute for Life Sciences, Wessex Medical Research and Bowel Research UK.