Phages for Global Health, 383 62nd Street, Oakland, CA 94618, USA.
Viruses. 2018 Jun 27;10(7):345. doi: 10.3390/v10070345.
The antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis and HIV/AIDS epidemic exhibit many parallels. In both, infectious diseases have caused millions of deaths worldwide, with AMR expected to kill even more people each year than HIV/AIDS did at its peak. In addition, both have required or will require new classes of drugs for control. For HIV/AIDS, development of vital antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) was accomplished in several stages: expanding public awareness about the disease, gathering commitment from the international community to tackle the problem, and eventually establishing policies and global funds to deliver new therapeutics. For AMR, the pursuit of new antimicrobials appears to be following a similar trajectory. This paper examines how lessons and processes leading to ARVs might be applied to developing AMR drugs, in particular bacteriophages (phages). These possess many essential characteristics: inexpensive manufacture, rapid drug development, and a ready means to prevent phage-resistant microbes from emerging. However, the broad application of phage-based products has yet to be fully demonstrated, and will require both international coordination and modified regulatory policies.
抗微生物药物耐药性（AMR）危机和艾滋病疫情存在许多相似之处。在这两种情况下，传染病都在全球范围内造成了数百万人死亡，预计 AMR 每年造成的死亡人数将超过艾滋病疫情高峰期。此外，这两种情况都需要或将要开发新的药物类别来进行控制。对于艾滋病，重要的抗逆转录病毒药物（ARV）的开发分几个阶段完成：提高公众对这种疾病的认识，在国际社会中汇集解决问题的承诺，最终制定政策和全球基金来提供新的治疗方法。对于 AMR，开发新的抗菌药物似乎也遵循着类似的轨迹。本文探讨了导致 ARV 开发的经验和过程如何应用于开发 AMR 药物，特别是噬菌体（phages）。噬菌体具有许多重要特征：廉价的制造、快速的药物开发，以及防止噬菌体耐药微生物出现的现成手段。然而，噬菌体产品的广泛应用尚未得到充分证明，这将需要国际协调和修改监管政策。
