Jan 14, 2021
"This is the worse superbug you
can get," said her husband's doctors when diagnosing him with a
life-threatening multidrug resistant bacterial infection. But
Steffanie Strathdee put her research skills to work and eventually
was able to convince doctors to treat him with an experimental
phage therapy that ended up saving his life.
Listen and learn
Steffanie A. Strathdee is the
Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences and the Harold Simon
Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of
California San Diego School of Medicine. She helped found and
co-directs UCSD’s new center for Innovative Phage Applications and
Therapeutics (IPATH) and also works with the Global Health
Institute and the International Core of UCSD’s Center for AIDS
Research.
An infectious disease epidemiologist, she's also the author
of The Perfect Predator, which tells the story of her husband's struggle
with a superbug and the successful effort to help him recover with
phage viruses. Phages are viruses that infect bacteria, and are
emerging as a potential winner as scientists struggle with how to
prevent superbugs from causing deadly infections.
She gives listeners a
fascinating history of how politics and war kept phage therapy out
of American medicine for decades. First discovered by a French
Canadian microbiologist, their adoption by Russians pre-World War
II marked them as off-the-table for the American medical field. But
they are emerging again as having great potential, and Steffanie
Strathdee helps enlighten listeners by describing the process and
why they can be effective.
First, scientists are able
to pick and choose their phages, testing to make sure what bacteria
the phages will infect. They can get specific, killing only the
bacteria they want to target. Ideally, they'll collect a couple of
different phages for the best chances of success, then make
isolates of them. The most difficult stage is the
purification, she says. Scientists are moving ahead, designing
clinical studies.
Listen in for more exciting news about this life-saving
treatment.
For more, see the
Innovative Phage Applications and
Therapeutics (IPATH) website.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK