Name: 【TED】Alexander Belcredi: How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis (How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis | Alexander Belcredi)
Uploaded: 2018-12-07T18:51:39.000Z
Duration: 11 min 14 s
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It's true, some of them cause devastating disease.

But others can do the exact opposite -- they can cure disease.

Now, the first time I heard about phages was back in 2013.

was telling me about a woman he was treating.

The woman had a knee injury, required multiple surgeries,

developed a chronic bacterial infection in her leg.

the bacteria causing the infection also did not respond

So at this point, typically, the only option left is to amputate the leg

to stop the infection from spreading further.

Now, my father-in-law was desperate for a different kind of solution,

and he applied for an experimental, last-resort treatment using phages.

Within three weeks of applying the phages, the chronic infection had healed up,

I was fascinated by this weird conception:

To this day, I am fascinated by the medical potential of phages.

And I actually quit my job last year to build a company in this space.

The image that you see here was taken by an electron microscope.

And that means what we see on the screen is in reality extremely tiny.

The grainy thing in the middle with the head, the long body

this is the image of a prototypical phage.

In our team, we've estimated that you have more than 10 billion phages

Well, viruses are good at infecting cells.

And phages are great at infecting bacteria.

And your hand, just like so much of our body,

making it an ideal hunting ground for phages.

It's also important to know that phages are extremely selective hunters.

Typically, a phage will only infect a single bacterial species.

So in this rendering here, the phage that you see

hunts for a bacterium called Staphylococcus aureus,

which is known as MRSA in its drug-resistant form.

The way the phage hunts is with its feet.

The feet are actually extremely sensitive receptors,

on the lookout for the right surface on a bacterial cell.

the phage will latch on to the bacterial cell wall

and travels into the bacteria through the long body.

At this point, the phage reprograms the bacteria

The bacteria, in effect, becomes a phage factory.

Once around 50-100 phages have accumulated within the bacteria cell,

the phages are then able to release a protein

As the bacteria bursts, the phages move out

and go on the hunt again for a new bacteria to infect.

Now, I'm sorry, this probably sounded like a scary virus again.

But it's exactly this ability of phages --

to multiply within the bacteria and then kill them --

that make them so interesting from a medical point of view.

The other part that I find extremely interesting

Now, just five years ago, I really had no clue about phages.

And yet, today I would tell you they are part of a natural principle.

Phages and bacteria go back to the earliest days of evolution.

They have always existed in tandem, keeping each other in check.

So this is really the story of yin and yang, of the hunter and the prey,

that phages are the most abundant organism on our planet.

So even before we continue talking about their medical potential,

I think everybody should know about phages and their role on earth:

Now, how come we have something that works so well in nature,

we do not have a single drug on the market

that uses this principle to combat bacterial infections?

The simple answer is: no one has developed this kind of a drug yet,

at least not one that conforms to the Western regulatory standards

that set the norm for so much of the world.

To understand why, we need to move back in time.

He is one of the two scientists credited with discovering phages.

Except, when he discovered them back in 1917, he had no clue

【TED】Alexander Belcredi: How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis (How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis | Alexander Belcredi)

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【TED】Alexander Belcredi: How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis (How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis | Alexander Belcredi)

weird

chronic

potential

obvious