Viruses that will save the world

I had a week off from the world of pagers, night call, ER admissions and clinic. I was in Pittsburgh attending the Phage Hunters Workshop (http://www.pitt.edu/~gfh/summerworkshop.html). This workshop is meant for High School Science Teachers, but I went to learn some of the techniques.

There is a group of viruses called bacteriophages. These viruses are specific for bacteria. They do not attack other kinds of cells. Before antibiotics were discovered, they were even used clinically to treat microbial infections.

Think about this. In nature, exists the ultimate enemy of pathogenic bacteria. These bacteriophages (phages, for short) invade, multiple within and destroy these pathogenic bacteria. Of course, just as with antibiotics, bacteria evolve resistance to them. Unlike antibiotics which are static however, phages co-evolve to once again be able to target their hosts. This host-parasite dance continues through time. The phages are ubiquitious. There are a billion of them per cc of lake, river and sea water. We ingest them all the time. They are easily isolated from soil, sewage... anywhere you care to look. They are so easy to isolate and grow, in fact, that middle and high school kids can do it.

The Pittsburgh Bacteriophage Institute holds a Summer Workshop that teaches High School Science Teachers how to 'hunt' for phages in their environment. For several years now, high school students have been isolating and purifying their own phages. They get to name them too.

What excites me about these wonderful little critters is that they may hold the answer to multi-drug resistant superbugs. The Pittsburgh group and collaborators are working on phages against Mycobacterium species -- the group of bacteria that cause the deadly diseases of tuberculosis and leprosy.

My own research (if I can continue to squeeze it into the busy life of a medical resident) is to isolate and purify phages with activity against Staphylococcus aureus. In fact, I declare my life's research ambition to become the world authority on lytic phages of S. aureus. Okay, I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. (Check out the Courses Web site at http://hatfull12.bio.pitt.edu:8080/