March
18
the forgotten cure 2
- Due to having a state health system, which means that all health care services were provided free by the government, it caused citizens to turn more towards alternative medicines, because the USSR was unable to provide adequate and quality antibiotics due to lack of funding. So this made people turn to herbal supplements and phage therapies as a way of curing their ailments.
- The Phage Therapy Center in Wroclaw is a well staffed, a modern building, with many phage samples, and is well funded. They also have proper security for the phage samples. The Elivia Institute on the other hand is lacking funding, and was falling apart…the walls were cracked, and it is a small facility with about 10 individual labs. Some scientists will use the grant money they receive to update the labs conditions, or they themselves will paint and renovate their labs. I believe these 2 institutes have had very different outcomes based on their location and the government they are under. For example the Elivia Institute was thriving before the collapse of the Soviet Union, but now with little funding, they are struggling, and so are the wages of the scientists who work there. While the Phage Therapy center is based in Wroclaw, an area with a booming economy, under Polish rule. Ultimately, this also boils down to the fact that the Phage therapy center gets funding from the West as well, was the Elivia Institute does not.
- Merril’s experiment involved injecting lambda phage that kill E.coli into the stomach of mice. After 7 hours he then drew a blood sample and isolated the phages that were still present in the blood, then produced more of them, then re-injected them back into the mice. This is called “serial passage”, and this process was repeated 8 times until a phage that could last 18 hours in the blood stream was achieved. In their research paper, one can see they tested Argo1, Argo2, and a wild type phage. The results showed that argo1 and 2 both last in higher concentrations much longer, than the wild type.
- One really large issue plaguing Western medicine right now is “super” bacteria, or bacteria that has developed resistance to all/many antibiotics. Phages would be a great way to combat such bacteria, but some testing would need to be done to determine what happens when that bacteria becomes resistant to the phages being used. Also phages can be used to treat cancer and induce anti-cancer micro environments. This is still being tested and developed though.
I agree with what you said on the potential of phage therapy in the west and it would be a great way to combat such bacteria! I also agree that testing needs to be done to determine the specific phages that are resistant to specific bacteria and how these discoveries will further our understanding of phage therapy. Overall, I completely agree with what you believe seems to be the potential of phage therapy in the west!
I do agree that a big issue is super bacteria. What do you think the move will be once bacteria begin to develop resistance to bacteriophages? Will we constantly have to keep jumping from treatment to treatment as bacteria gain resistance? I for one believe that this constant battle between man and bacteria will continue, and we will have to find a new solution to strains of bacteria being resistant to phages and antibiotics.