[Phage therapy: a realistic weapon against multidrug resistant bacteria].

La phagothérapie : Une arme crédible face à l’antibiorésistance

Nicolas Dufour (1) , Laurent Debarbieux (2)

1 Centre Hospitalier René Dubos [Pontoise]
2 Département de Microbiologie - Department of Microbiology

The continuous increase in antibiotic resistance among bacteria in infectious diseases associated with the lack of new antibiotics able to circumvent them are urging physicians, researchers and politicians to look for others options for treatments. Among those, phage therapy (use of natural viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages) is one of the most promising approaches. In this review, we first focus on the problematic raised by multidrug resistant bacteria before addressing the main biological characteristics of bacteriophages, as well as the credibility and the relevance of phage therapy. We then introduce human applications, their potentials and limits.

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Microbiology and Parasitology; Bacteriology

Nicolas Dufour, Laurent Debarbieux. La phagothérapie : Une arme crédible face à l’antibiorésistance. médecine/sciences, 2017, 33 (4), pp.410 - 416. ⟨10.1051/medsci/20173304011⟩. ⟨pasteur-01827321⟩