Ansaldi Mireille, Boulanger Pascale, Brives Charlotte, Debarbieux Laurent, Dufour Nicolas, Froissart Rémy, Gandon Sylvain, Le Hénaff Claire, Petit Marie-Agnès, Rocha Eduardo, Torres-Barceló Clara
Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Aix-Marseille Université, Institut de microbiologie de la Méditerranée, UMR7283, Laboratoire de chimie bactérienne, 31 chemin Joseph Aiguier, 13402 Marseille Cedex 9, France.
Université Paris-Sud, Université, Paris-Saclay, Institut de biologie intégrative de la cellule, UMR 9198 CEA, CNRS, Bât 430, Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay cedex, France.
Virologie (Montrouge). 2020 Feb 1;24(1):23-36. doi: 10.1684/vir.2019.0805.
In the 1917 article in which Félix d'Hérelle describes his first observations and proposes the name of bacteriophage, he also reports the first use of these viruses to treat bacterial infections, thus giving birth to phage therapy. Soon after antibiotics supplanted bacteriophages. Today, bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics become a growing public health issue worldwide. This situation has revived research aiming at developing the antibacterial activity of bacteriophages to treat patients as well as diseases in animals and plants. In fact, the areas of applications of bacteriophages as antibacterial are widening as current solutions of chemical nature are questioned. This review summarizes the basic principles of therapeutic applications of bacteriophages and presents recent data in areas where commercial exploitation is occurring or about to emerge.
