Bacteriophage and Phage-Therapy: An Alternative to Antibiotics

Bacteriophages are known for a century but their use in therapy to cure bacterial infection is still unknown. The working on bacteriophage investigation started about a century ago with their discovery by the English microbiologist Twort in 1915. The continuous growth of resistance in bacteria for various diseases and infections has caused renewing in bacteriophage therapy against bacterial infections. Lytic bacteriophages are those bacteriophages that can kill bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics by the end of their lytic cycle. Bacteriophages use proteins for the lysis of bacteria, termed as the Holin-lysin system. Research is going on globally on therapeutic uses of bacteriophages as less is known about phage therapy to combat bacterial diseases and infections. This therapy has attracted many scientists as difficulty in curing bacterial infection is at the peak. This difficulty is arising mainly in antibiotic-resistance bacteria in contemporary medicine