Are Phages the Wave of the Future? Using Viruses to Treat Bacterial Diseases

Researchers with the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania used a genetically modified bacteriophage—a type of virus that infects bacteria—to successfully treat 15-year-old Isabelle Carnell-Holdaway, a British girl with cystic fibrosis who had been fighting a drug-resistant Mycobacterium abscessus infection half her life. Her physician, Helen Spencer, with London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, was out of options and reached out to Graham Hatfull at U of P.