Mine Orlu Professor of Pharmaceutics, University College London (UCL) School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Life Sciences, UCL Wilfried Weber Scienti昀椀c Director, Leibniz Institute for New Materials The number of microbes living on and within the Promising early results of designer phage therapies human body matches, and may even exceed, are attracting signi昀椀cant venture capital that will help 19 the number of human cells. The community to facilitate clinical testing of engineered phages. of microbes an organism harbours is called its Potential applications of designer phages are microbiome, and the microbiomes of humans, numerous and diverse. Locus Biosciences is using animals and plants play important roles in the engineered phages to combat antibiotic-resistant health of these organisms.20,21 bacteria, whereas Eligo Biosciences is pursuing similar approaches to make certain bacteria less pathogenic. Recent advances allow engineering of the Of the 44 phage-related clinical trials with therapeutic microbiome to bene昀椀t human well-being and intent, 29 have been posted since the beginning of 24 agricultural productivity. Key to this engineering 2020. Phage-based therapies involving both natural are phages – viruses that selectively infect speci昀椀c and designer phages will continue to emerge as a types of bacteria. Upon infection, a phage injects powerful method to engineer microbiomes, enhancing its genetic information into the bacterium. Using the health of humans, animals and plants. synthetic biology tools, the genetic information of phages can be reprogrammed so that infected bacteria execute a bioengineered set of genetic Impact instructions. With bioengineered phages, 昀椀ngerprint scientists can change a bacterium’s functions, causing it to produce a therapeutic molecule or to People become sensitive to a certain drug, for example. As phages generally only infect one type of bacteria, individual bacterial species within the Equity Planet complex microbiome can be targeted. Designer phages are showing potential for treating microbiome-associated diseases such as hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) – a rare but serious condition that affects the kidneys and blood-clotting functions, caused by a certain Prosperity species of E. coli. Scientists engineered the Industry Image: genetic material of an E. coli-infecting phage Engineered viruses to encode genetic “scissors” that can chop could allow for hyper- up the E. coli genes that lead to HUS. Animal targeted therapies that studies demonstrated that administration of can selectively affect these designer phages signi昀椀cantly reduced speci昀椀c bacteria. the presence of the HUS-causing strain of Credit: Midjourney and E. coli in the microbiome and alleviated HUS Phages are showing potential 22 Studio Miko. symptoms. This approach was recently granted for treating microbiome- Prompt (abbreviated): an orphan drug designation by the U.S. Food “A microscopic image of and Drug Administration, poising it for clinical associated diseases and 23 a virus attacking a cell”. trials. Phages are also being designed as feed revolutionizing the engineering Read more: supplements to enhance the growth of livestock, Discover expert analysis treat certain plant diseases and eliminate of microbiomes for human, related to designer dangerous bacteria in food supply chains, in animal and plant health. phages on the Strategic alignment with the World Health Organization’s Intelligence Platform. “One Health” approach. Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2023 15