“New center aims to advance bacteriophage therapy”

“The University of California San Diego (UCSD) yesterday announced the launch of a new effort to expand the clinical use of bacteria-killing viruses against multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens.

The Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH) will bring physicians and researchers from UCSD School of Medicine together to advance research on bacteriophage therapy, in which viruses that specifically target bacteria are used to treat patients with multidrug-resistant infections. The ultimate aim of IPATH will be to make phage therapy more widely available as a clinical option for patients with life-threatening infections that aren’t responding to antibiotics.

“The global health crisis of antimicrobial resistance warrants that phage therapy be examined alongside other new drugs that come along,” Steffanie Strathdee, PhD, co-director of IPATH and associate dean of global health sciences at UCSD School of Medicine, told CIDRAP News.”

Source: CIDRAP