Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics and Center for Phage Technology, 2128 TAMU, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
Curr Pharm Biotechnol. 2010 Jan;11(1):2-14. doi: 10.2174/138920110790725311.
Phage therapy is the use of bacteriophages--viruses that use bacteria as their host cells--as biocontrol agents of bacteria. Currently, phage therapy is garnering renewed interest as bacterial resistance to antibiotics becomes widespread. Historically, phage therapy was largely abandoned in the West in the 1940s due to the advent of chemical antibiotics, and the unreliability of phage-based treatments when compared to antibiotics. The choice of phage strain and the methods of phage preparation are now thought to have been critical to the success or failure of phage therapy trials. Insufficiently virulent phages, especially against actual target bacteria, allow bacteria to survive treatment while poorly prepared phage stocks, even if of sufficiently virulent phages, lack the numbers of viable phages required for adequate treatment. In this review we discuss the factors that determine the methods of isolation, analysis, and identification of phage species for phage therapy. We go on to discuss the various methods available for purifying phages as well as considerations of the degree of purification which is sufficient for various applications. Lastly, we review the current practices used to prepare commercial phage therapy products.
噬菌体疗法是利用噬菌体（以细菌为宿主细胞的病毒）作为细菌的生物防治剂。目前，随着细菌对抗生素的耐药性日益普遍，噬菌体疗法重新引起了人们的兴趣。历史上，由于化学抗生素的出现以及与抗生素相比噬菌体治疗的不可靠性，噬菌体疗法在 20 世纪 40 年代在西方基本上被放弃。现在认为，噬菌体菌株的选择和噬菌体制备方法是噬菌体治疗试验成败的关键。毒力不足的噬菌体，特别是针对实际靶细菌的噬菌体，会使细菌在治疗中存活下来，而准备不当的噬菌体库存，即使噬菌体毒力足够，也缺乏足够数量的活菌来进行充分治疗。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了决定噬菌体疗法中噬菌体物种的分离、分析和鉴定方法的因素。我们接着讨论了可用于纯化噬菌体的各种方法，并考虑了各种应用所需的纯化程度。最后，我们回顾了用于制备商业噬菌体治疗产品的当前实践。
