Phage Hunting on the Campus of Bard College

Antibiotic resistance poses a major threat to global public health. Due to the increased number of bacterial pathogens becoming multidrug and extensively drug resistant, as well as antibiotic resistance to nearly all developed antibiotics, investigation of alternative methods for treating bacterial infections have been ongoing. Phage therapy is a viable option to combating antibiotic resistant bacteria in a clinical setting, however, its application is stunted by a lack of host-specific bacteriophages. In order to help alleviate this barrier, phage hunting was conducted on the campus of Bard College in search of bacteriophages against the host Mycobacterium abscessus, which serves as a good model for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Bacteriophages were not successfully isolated from three different soil collection sites using three different isolation methods. Increased participation and continuous phage hunting must be conducted in order to advance phage therapy and its ability to treat antibiotic resistant bacterial infections