Bacteriophage therapy
to the QAMH was observed, and most of them were related to the broadcast of two phage therapy prime time documentaries on Dutch television: Bacteriofagen: een alternatief voor antibiotica? and Dokters van Morgen over bacteriën, indicating that traditional media may significantly improve the publicity of phage therapy. As the role of the media is non- negligible in patients’ self -management of their disease, it can be suggested that, in order to increase the publicity of phage therapy while accommodating the generally varying levels of the public’s education status, more news articles, TV, and radio programmes can be beneficial. Fourthly, there has still been a particular lack of co-operative efforts in phage therapy between the East and the west. The eastern legacy in phage therapy (especially that of Georgia) has repeatedly failed to succeed in the connection to Western medicine mainly due to regulatory discrepancies and entrenched residual socio-polit ical biases against the old ‘Soviet technology’. 74 Consequently, as the capacity of phage therapy in Europe and North America is currently still limited, many desperate patients from the west are, in fact, flying to Georgia for phage therapy treatment, mainly at the Eliava Institute. 75 The gap is yet to be resolved, and international collaboration should be promoted. The hope, albeit dim, might be realized as more international progress is made in globalization and standardization. And finally, the future effect of mass use of therapeutic phages in both clinical settings and other industrial sectors (e.g., biological control, animal health) is indeed unpredictable due to a lack of credible, available, and up-to-date data and the unpredictability of the co-evolutionary dynamic patterns between phages and their hosts. In this sense, phage therapy is not expected to arise as the ultimate versatile panacea superseding antibiotics for everyday infections. It is only advised to be used for people who have an infection whose cause has been adequately identified and that cannot be treated effectively or efficiently by other more convenient therapeutic approaches. Although the foreseeable future of these smaller fleas seems optimistic with a large number of potential opportunities for the realiza tion of the ‘prêt -à- porter’ and ‘sur - mesure’ models, in any case, the path will certainly not be smooth due to the challenging hindrances to the development process of phage therapy. However, we must also acknowledge that by achieving the goal, the potential clinical, commercial, and socio- economic benefits of nature’s secret weapon will be exceedingly rewarding to all humankind. With that goal in sight, further exploitation of even smaller fleas in the form of virophages (small viruses that infect other viruses) may also be eventually realized, 76 and there will be much more left by our nature for us to explore and unveil.
Conclusion
It has been a century of the phage. The discovery of phages has given rise to phenomenal biological and commercial impact on the history of medicine, and it will also be highly likely to exert long-lasting impact on various aspects of medicine in the coming years in the context of personalized medicine and regulatory reforms. The unique biological characteristics of the smaller fleas endow them with significant therapeutic potential in combating bacterial infections and other diseases and position phage therapy as a promising and practical alternative or synergistic supplement to traditional broad- spectrum antibiotics. As the re-introduction of phage therapy to western medicine becomes eminently inevitable, we must admit that neither phages nor antibiotics are the almighty panaceas, yet phages may inform practical attempts to help us achieve new medical advancements in disease control in the future.
74 Häusler 2008. 75 Myelnikov 2021. 76 Deresinski 2009.
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