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48 Hours Investigates
Silent Killers: Fantastic
Phages?
(CBS) After breaking his foot five years ago, Toronto bass
player Alfred Gertler got an infection that antibiotics couldn’t
cure. Doctors told him he might have to have his foot amputated.
But then he read about a radically different way to treat
infections. The treatment was in the former Soviet Republic of
Georgia, at the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi.
“It was very strange. But it seemed like a lifeline,” he
says. So he went. “They had no heat, no electrical power, no
water for much of the day,” says Gertler.
What Eliava did have was treatment that worked. They poured
an ointment in the wound and within three days, the infection
was gone. Susan Spencer reports.
The treatment used something called bacteriophage – or
“phage” as some call it. Researchers at Eliava are convinced
that phages are a fine, natural alternative to antibiotics.
Phages are harmless viruses that have only one purpose in life:
to eat bacteria that cause infection. Susan Spencer reports that
they could help overcome our dangerous dependence on
antibiotics.
“A miracle of nature is that there seems to be a
bacteriophage for every kind of bacteria,” says Michael
Shnayerson, co-author of “The Killers Within.” He says these
viruses may work when antibiotics fail. “Given the fix that
we're in with the rise of resistance, we need to look at other
approaches. And phage is just one of several,” says Mark Plotkin,
the other co-author.
This approach is nothing new at Eliava, where they have been
making phage medication for more than 60 years. They use
techniques that are not cutting-edge: They isolate bacteria and
then search for the specific phages that kill them.
In local hospitals, doctors use phages to treat wounds. In
clinics, phages are used to treat throat infections. For burns,
there is phage bio-derm, artificial skin with time-release
medication.
“Everybody knows what this is, and it’s just a standard part
of health care,” says Mzia Kutateladze, a senior scientist at
Eliava. The price is right too: $2.50 for ten ampules.
But if phages are so great why aren’t doctors in the U.S.
using them, just as the doctors in Georgia do? The answer:
penicillin. “Nobody cared very much once penicillin came along
in the western world. They thought they had the problem licked
for all time. We have a lot of hubris a lot of time,” says Betty
Kutter, a microbiology professor from Evergreen University, who
believes passionately that phage therapy works.
With Eliava, she hopes to convince others that using a
naturally-occurring virus to fight an infection is a fine idea.
“These are viruses that can absolutely not infect human cells,
or animal cells, or plant cells,” she says. “No chance of
getting sick from the treatment. The only kind of cells they
infect is bacteria.”
Kutter brought Gertler to Eliava. She says his foot would
have been amputated without phage treatment. Gertler’s treatment
would be off-limits in the U.S. because phage therapy has never
gone through the rigorous testing the U.S. demands.
And consider where phages are found: “We isolate the new
phage clones from sewage,” says Mzia with a laugh. “Not a very
clean place. But it has a lot of phages.”
Will Americans be willing to try a medicine that is made from
sewage, has viruses in it, and is used in the former Soviet
Union? “You can trust it because it works and it has been
working during so much time for so long,” says Mzia.
Now, some American entrepreneurs want to give this old
technology new consideration.
Intralytix in Baltimore is one of a few small companies
starting carefully controlled studies.
“There’s no question that on the test tube and on the culture
plate, these things look like gang busters,” says infectious
disease specialist Glenn Morris, co-founder of the company.
“Translating that into something that’s effective in terms of
human therapy; there’s a lot to suggest that they do work. But
at least in this country, we still have to prove it.”
That will take at least 3 to 5 years, he says, even using
Eliava's experience. And who knows where Eliava will be then.
The collapse of the Soviet Union cut off funding for research,
equipment, and workers. Today, Eliava struggles just to hang on
to its unique phage inventory.
There has been recent outside help, including new equipment
and a grant from the U.S. State Department. “It’s very hopeful.
And this is the only way to save our science and just keep
going,” says Mzia.
No one thinks phages will replace antibiotics completely, but
they may be part of the answer when antibiotics don’t work. “I
think we’re absolutely crazy if we don’t learn to use them and
to use them well and efficiently and effectively,” says Kutter.
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