Among the many different sub-topics within biology, I think the one that I have the highest affinity for (and so will probably pursue an actual research career in) is virology. “Study of viruses” - but you could’ve guessed that probably. I mean, viruses themselves are still the subject of debate (are they living or not?) within academia. I’ve seen firsthand that there are those that align with either answer within the biology faculty of my university, so needless to say, there are points to be made on both sides. However, I’m not so much concerned with that particular question, even though I don’t deny that it is one that deserves some thought. I’m more interested in the medical application of viruses, more specifically, gene and phage therapy. One employs human-infecting viruses (mostly lentivirus, or HIV), the other uses bacteriophages, which infect bacteria of course.
For this particular research project, I’ll focus on the latter, although the former will definitely be the subject of a later project. But back to phage therapy. You may or may not have heard about it, but with the increasing frequency with which antibiotic-resistant bacteria are appearing in first-world hospitals, I think it not unlikely that you’ll hear of it sooner rather than later. In brief, the premise is simple, employ the microscopic evolutionarily designed predators of these bacteria to do what antibiotics increasingly can’t. It really seems like a perfect solution, especially since bacteriophages can not only kill antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, but they also can do so with a much greater degree of precision than any antibiotic could hope to attain. Which begs the question, why hasn’t the general public heard more about phage therapy? There was a TIME article which I read a while ago, but there doesn’t seem to be much noise in the news about it besides. There are a few questions that I hope to find answers to over the course of this research project:
1. Where is current knowledge about the applicability and practicality of phage therapy?
2. What are the reasons behind the absence of phage therapy from “mainstream” medicine? Are there limitations and issues with phage therapy that have thus far discouraged their general introduction?
3. How can these problems with phage therapy possibly be resolved?
I hope to post the first report on my investigation by the end of next week.
Until then!
- BJW
Kommentare