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Mycobacteriophages as Potential Therapeutic Agents against Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis

The current emergence of multi-, extensively-, extremely-, and total-drug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis poses a major health, social, and economic threat, and stresses the need to develop new therapeutic strategies. The notion of phage therapy against bacteria has been around for m...

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Autores principales: Allué-Guardia, Anna, Saranathan, Rajagopalan, Chan, John, Torrelles, Jordi B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7828454/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33450990
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22020735
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author Allué-Guardia, Anna
Saranathan, Rajagopalan
Chan, John
Torrelles, Jordi B.
author_facet Allué-Guardia, Anna
Saranathan, Rajagopalan
Chan, John
Torrelles, Jordi B.
author_sort Allué-Guardia, Anna
collection PubMed
description The current emergence of multi-, extensively-, extremely-, and total-drug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis poses a major health, social, and economic threat, and stresses the need to develop new therapeutic strategies. The notion of phage therapy against bacteria has been around for more than a century and, although its implementation was abandoned after the introduction of drugs, it is now making a comeback and gaining renewed interest in Western medicine as an alternative to treat drug-resistant pathogens. Mycobacteriophages are genetically diverse viruses that specifically infect mycobacterial hosts, including members of the M. tuberculosis complex. This review describes general features of mycobacteriophages and their mechanisms of killing M. tuberculosis, as well as their advantages and limitations as therapeutic and prophylactic agents against drug-resistant M. tuberculosis strains. This review also discusses the role of human lung micro-environments in shaping the availability of mycobacteriophage receptors on the M. tuberculosis cell envelope surface, the risk of potential development of bacterial resistance to mycobacteriophages, and the interactions with the mammalian host immune system. Finally, it summarizes the knowledge gaps and defines key questions to be addressed regarding the clinical application of phage therapy for the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis.
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spelling pubmed-78284542021-01-25 Mycobacteriophages as Potential Therapeutic Agents against Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Allué-Guardia, Anna Saranathan, Rajagopalan Chan, John Torrelles, Jordi B. Int J Mol Sci Review The current emergence of multi-, extensively-, extremely-, and total-drug resistant strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis poses a major health, social, and economic threat, and stresses the need to develop new therapeutic strategies. The notion of phage therapy against bacteria has been around for more than a century and, although its implementation was abandoned after the introduction of drugs, it is now making a comeback and gaining renewed interest in Western medicine as an alternative to treat drug-resistant pathogens. Mycobacteriophages are genetically diverse viruses that specifically infect mycobacterial hosts, including members of the M. tuberculosis complex. This review describes general features of mycobacteriophages and their mechanisms of killing M. tuberculosis, as well as their advantages and limitations as therapeutic and prophylactic agents against drug-resistant M. tuberculosis strains. This review also discusses the role of human lung micro-environments in shaping the availability of mycobacteriophage receptors on the M. tuberculosis cell envelope surface, the risk of potential development of bacterial resistance to mycobacteriophages, and the interactions with the mammalian host immune system. Finally, it summarizes the knowledge gaps and defines key questions to be addressed regarding the clinical application of phage therapy for the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis. MDPI 2021-01-13 /pmc/articles/PMC7828454/ /pubmed/33450990 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22020735 Text en © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Allué-Guardia, Anna
Saranathan, Rajagopalan
Chan, John
Torrelles, Jordi B.
Mycobacteriophages as Potential Therapeutic Agents against Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
title Mycobacteriophages as Potential Therapeutic Agents against Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
title_full Mycobacteriophages as Potential Therapeutic Agents against Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
title_fullStr Mycobacteriophages as Potential Therapeutic Agents against Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
title_full_unstemmed Mycobacteriophages as Potential Therapeutic Agents against Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
title_short Mycobacteriophages as Potential Therapeutic Agents against Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis
title_sort mycobacteriophages as potential therapeutic agents against drug-resistant tuberculosis
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7828454/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33450990
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22020735
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