Locus Biosciences announced the completion of a phase 1b trial of CRISPR-Cas3-enhanced phage targeting E. coli in urinary tract infections. The trial met all the endpoints, and represents the first randomized, placebo-controlled trial using recombinant phage therapy. The company is advancing into Phase 2 trials to prove the efficacy of recombinant phage in precisely removing specific bacteria from the human body without harming any other bacteria in a patient’s microbiome.
TechnoPhage has initiated a phase I/IIa study to test a phage treatment for diabetic foot infections. This product is the first of TechnoPhage’s pipeline to enter clinical trials, constituting an exciting milestone for the company. The results of the study are expected during 2021.
Esther Shmidov (Bar-Ilan University, Israel) and colleagues published a new paper on a counter selection-based novel method of curing prophages in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. They validated their method with local PCR amplification and whole-genome sequencing, proving it to be highly efficient for curing prophages in laboratory as well as clinical strains.
Shayla Hesse (National Cancer Institute, USA) and colleagues published a new paper showing that mutations in genes coding for cell surface structures impair adsorption of phages in multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae. They concluded that phage cocktails targeting different phage receptors decrease the incidence of resistance, while multiple phages targeting the same receptor increases the chances of resistance development.
Mabruka Salem (University of Helsinki) and colleagues published a new paper on the isolation and characterization of three broad host range Yersinia phages. Phages were characterized with TEM, growth curves, burst size assays, and genome size. Whole-genome sequencing of spontaneous phage-resistant mutants revealed mutations in porin and LPS genes, which were successfully complemented in trans.
