Pathogen-Phage Geomapping to Overcome Resistance.

Area of Science:

• Microbiology and Virology
• Bacteriophage Therapy
• Antimicrobial Resistance

Background:

• Antibiotic resistance is a growing global health threat, driving renewed interest in bacteriophages (phages) as therapeutic agents.
• Phage resistance in pathogens is a significant challenge for phage therapy, necessitating efficient methods for discovering novel phages.
• Conventional phage discovery methods are slow, labor-intensive, and limited in scope, hindering the development of effective phage therapeutics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an efficient strategy for discovering virulent bacteriophages targeting antibiotic-resistant pathogens.
• To overcome the limitations of traditional phage discovery techniques.
• To create a diverse library of novel phages for therapeutic applications.

Main Methods:

• Combined small-volume environmental sampling with 16S rRNA sequencing to identify ecological hotspots for phage-bacteria co-existence.
• Developed a portable phage hunting device (ΦHD) for direct, high-throughput enrichment of phages from environmental reservoirs.
• Implemented a strategy termed geographical phage mapping (geΦmapping) for targeted phage discovery.

Main Results:

• geΦmapping successfully identified ecological 'hotspots' for targeted phage hunting.
• The ΦHD device enabled rapid generation of highly enriched phage concentrates.
• Integration of geΦmapping and high-throughput enrichment led to the construction of the RΦ library, containing novel phages against resistant pathogens.

Conclusions:

• The geΦmapping strategy combined with the ΦHD device significantly accelerates the discovery of therapeutic bacteriophages.
• This integrated approach overcomes bottlenecks in conventional phage discovery, enabling the creation of diverse phage libraries.
• The developed methods hold promise for advancing phage therapy against antibiotic-resistant infections.