Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Bacteriophages are bacterial viruses, capable of killing even multi-drug resistant bacterial cells. For this reason, therapeutic use of phages is considered as a possible alternative to conventional antibiotics. However, phages are very host specific in comparison to wide-spectrum antibiotics and thus preparation of phage-cocktails beforehand against pathogens can be difficult. In this study, we evaluate whether it may be possible to isolate phages on-demand from environmental reservoir. We attempted to enrich infectious bacteriophages from sewage against nosocomial drug-resistant bacterial strains of different medically important species in order to evaluate the probability of discovering novel therapeutic phages. Stability and host-range were determined for the acquired phages. Our results suggest that on-demand isolation of phages is possible against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella and extended spectrum beta-lactamase Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae. The probability of finding suitable phages was less than 40% against vancomycin resistant Enterococcus and Acinetobacter baumannii strains. Furthermore, isolation of new phages against methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains was found to be very difficult.
Mattila et al. (Fri,) studied this question.