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Updated: Oct 29, 2025

Author Spotlight: Investigating Bacteriophage-Induced Immune Responses in Gnotobiotic Mice
Published on: January 26, 2024
Bacteriophage-mediated modulation of microbiota for diseases treatment
Yu Zhang1, Chu-Xin Li1, Xian-Zheng Zhang1
1Key Laboratory of Biomedical Polymers of Ministry of Education & Department of Chemistry, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, PR China.
Abstract:
The symbiotic microbiota is nowadays regarded as a human "invisible organ", its imbalance has been shown to be associated with many diseases. Besides, the progress of diseases can in turn change the internal structure of microbiota. Some diseases have shown their unique microbiota markers that may be potential therapeutic targets. Therefore, modulating microbiota may be a powerful strategy for diseases treatment. However, conventional microbiota modulation strategies lack selectivity and are suffer from side effects. In recent years, with the increasing challenge of antibiotic resistance, bacteriophage (phage) therapy has gradually presented its potential to treat drug-resistant infections. Phages are viruses that infect bacteria, with high selectivity for specific bacteria and almost no tropism for mammalian cells. Studies showed that phage-mediated precise modulation of microbiota has achieved great success in diseases treatment. Here, we briefly summarized the treatment strategies of phage-mediated modulation of microbiota, and discussed prospect of possible development in this field.
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