Antibiotics,which can destroy or prevent the growth of bacteria and cure infections,are vital to modern medicine. Their ability to kill bacteria without harming the patient has saved billions of lives and made surgical procedures much safer. But after decades of overuse, their powers are fading.Some bacteria have evolved resistance, creating a growing army of superbugs, against which there is little effective treatment.Antimicrobial(抗菌的)resistance,expected to kill 10 million people a year by 2050 up from around 1 million in 2019, has been seen as a crisis by many.
It would be unwise to rely on new antibiotics to solve the problem.The rate at which resistance emerges is increasing.Some new drugs last only two years before bacteria develop resistance.When new antibiotics do arrive, doctors often store them,using them only reluctantly and for short periods when faced with the most persistent infections.That limits sales, making new antibiotics an unappealing idea for most drug firms.
Governments have been trying to fix the problem bychanneling cash into research in drug firms.That has produced only limited improvements. But there is a phenomenon worth a look. Microbiologists have known for decades that disease-causing bacteria can suffer from illnesses of their own.They are supersensitive to attacks by phages,specialized viruses that infect bacteria and often kill them. Phages are considered a promising alternative to antibiotics.
Using one disease-causing virus to fight bacteria has several advantages. Like antibiotics, phages only tend to choose particular targets, leaving human cells alone as they infect and destroy bacterial ones. Unlike antibiotics, phages can evolve just as readily as bacteria can, meaning that even if bacteria do develop resistance, phages may be able to evolve around them in turn.
That, at least, is the theory. The trouble with phages is that comparatively little is known about them. After the discovery of penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928, they were largely ignored in the West. Given the severity of the antibiotic-resistance problem, it would be a good idea to find out more about them.
The first step is to run more clinical trials. Interest from Western firms is growing. But it is being held back by the fact that phages are an even less appealing investment than antibiotics. Since they are natural living things, there may be trouble patenting them, making it hard to recover any investment.
Governments can help fun d basic research into phage treatment and clarify the law around exactly what is and is not patentable. In time they can set up phage banks so as to make production cheaper. And they can spread awareness of the risks of overusing antibiotics, and the potential benefits of phages.