Comment by JumpCrisscross
1 day ago
“Dormant bacteria within the biofilm remain[ing] shielded from both the patient’s immune system and antibiotics because they cannot penetrate the biofilm matrix…”
Phages can penetrate biofilms [1]. (They have practice.)
But you can't patent phages, so we'll just continue ignoring them
This is basically a myth.
There are countless ways to make medicines and treatments around old technologies and other things that are off-patent, in a way that is novel and able to be patented.
Even boring old generic medicines often find themselves reformulated into new treatments as combinations, variations, or in some cases simply a different dose and indication.
"simple, obvious and wrong".
Phages are intensely species specific to bacterial species, so they don't work unless you identify exactly what you're targeting. Also, even if they can penetrate biofilms, that doesn't mean you can successfully deliver them to the biofilm in the human body, since they have to survive the whole blood stream and the normal human immune response to "not self" things.
Adding to this: a chief advantage of antibiotics (particularly the early ones) is that they were both broad-spectrum (controlling a vast array of bacteria) and sparing of non-bacterial cells (e.g., those of our own bodies).
Evolved resistance is changing at least the first part of that relationship.
Phages as you note are far more tailored, and may (if I understand correctly) need to be targeted to a patient's specific infection's genetic line. It's as if you had to select ammunition based on the specific type of target you were hunting, if not specific individuals. In the early days of antibiotics it was far more a case of "fire and forget" with a single magic bullet. (Not literally always, but for the overwhelming majority of bacterial infections.)
I guess specific (custom-made) IV phages might work. We „just“ need tech that makes the whole process affordable.
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> you can't patent phages, so we'll just continue ignoring them
Nope. Plenty of governments fund this sort of research. And chances are there isn’t an off-the-shelf phage that ticks the boxes, which means you need some amount of genetic engineering, in which case Monsanto has your back.