ArticleVirus evolution2020
Broadscale phage therapy is unlikely to select for widespread evolution of bacterial resistance to virus infection.
Article in Virus evolution, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Post-Microbial Therapeutics for the Next Generation of Medicine.MicrobiologyOpen · 2026Review
- Phages as antimicrobials against multi-drug resistant bacteria.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Review
- Phages connect the biological dots of antimicrobial resistance: from genesis and spread to alternative treatment modules.The Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy · 2025Review
- Isolation and Characterization of A Novel Pbunavirus with Promising Antibiofilm Activity Against Pseudomonas Aeruginosa.Current microbiology · 2025Article
- Bacteriophage resistance evolution in a honey bee pathogen.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2025Article
- Characterization, Genomic Analysis and Application of Five Lytic Phages Against Carbapenem-ResistantMicroorganisms · 2025Article
- Multi-strain phage induced clearance of bacterial infections.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Oral bacteriophages and their potential as adjunctive treatments for periodontitis: a narrative review.Journal of oral microbiology · 2025Review
- Challenges and opportunities of phage therapy forApplied and environmental microbiology · 2024Review
- Multi-strain phage induced clearance of bacterial infections.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Addressing the Research and Development Gaps in Modern Phage Therapy.PHAGE (New Rochelle, N.Y.) · 2024Review
- Thinking Phage Innovations Through Evolution and Ecology.PHAGE (New Rochelle, N.Y.) · 2024Review
- Emerging roles of bacteriophage-based therapeutics in combating antibiotic resistance.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Review
- Phage-antibiotic synergy: Cell filamentation is a key driver of successful phage predation.PLoS pathogens · 2023Article
- Phage therapy in the Covid-19 era: Advantages over antibiotics.Current research in microbial sciences · 2022Review
- Evolution of Bacterial Cross-Resistance to Lytic Phages and Albicidin Antibiotic.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Multi-drug resistant bacterial pathogens are alarmingly on the rise, signaling that the golden age of antibiotics may be over. Phage therapy is a classic approach that often employs strictly lytic bacteriophages (bacteria-specific viruses that kill cells) to combat infections. Recent success in using phages in patient treatment stimulates greater interest in phage therapy among Western physicians. But there is concern that widespread use of phage therapy would eventually lead to global spread of phage-resistant bacteria and widespread failure of the approach. Here, we argue that various mechanisms of horizontal genetic transfer (HGT) have largely contributed to broad acquisition of antibiotic resistance in bacterial populations and species, whereas similar evolution of broad resistance to therapeutic phages is unlikely. The tendency for phages to infect only particular bacterial genotypes limits their broad use in therapy, in turn reducing the likelihood that bacteria could acquire beneficial resistance genes from distant relatives via HGT. We additionally consider whether HGT of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) immunity would thwart generalized use of phages in therapy, and argue that phage-specific CRISPR spacer regions from one taxon are unlikely to provide adaptive value if horizontally-transferred to other taxa. For these reasons, we conclude that broadscale phage therapy efforts are unlikely to produce widespread selection for evolution of bacterial resistance.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.