I haven’t seen much on the lack of antibiotic research by big pharma recently, but apparently it’s still a thing. Fortunately, there are sometimes alternatives to using drugs to counter bad bacteria, such as bacteriophages:
Structural model of a bacteriophage.
A bacteriophage (/bækˈtɪərioʊfeɪdʒ/), also known informally as a phage (/ˈfeɪdʒ/), is a virus that infects and replicates within bacteria and archaea. The term was derived from “bacteria” and the Greek φαγεῖν (phagein), meaning “to devour”. Bacteriophages are composed of proteins that encapsulate a DNA or RNA genome, and may have structures that are either simple or elaborate. Their genomes may encode as few as four genes (e.g. MS2) and as many as hundreds of genes. Phages replicate within the bacterium following the injection of their genome into its cytoplasm. [Wikipedia]
It sounds like the basis of treatment for those bacterial infections which are immune to known antibiotics – and it’s true, as this CNN/Health article on the survival of a victim of a “superbug” makes clear:
The purified cocktail from Young’s lab was the first to arrive in San Diego. [Dr. Steffanie] Strathdee watched as doctors injected the Texas phages into the pus-filled abscesses in [her husband Tom] Patterson’s abdomen before settling down for the agonizing wait.
“We started with the abscesses because we didn’t know what would happen, and we didn’t want to kill him,” Schooley said. “We didn’t see any negative side effects; in fact, Tom seemed to be stabilizing a bit, so we continued the therapy every two hours.”
Two days later, the Navy cocktail arrived. Those phages were injected into Patterson’s bloodstream to tackle the bacteria that had spread to the rest of his body.
“We believe Tom was the first person to receive intravenous phage therapy to treat a systemic superbug infection in the US,” Strathdee told CNN.
“And three days later, Tom lifted his head off the pillow out of a deep coma and kissed his daughter’s hand. It was just miraculous.”
This is an interesting footnote:
A phone call later, Strathdee discovered phage treatment was well established in former Soviet bloc countries but had been discounted long ago as “fringe science” in the West.
Which is not to condemn modern medicine, but to note that occasionally the “discounted” should be reevaluated. Quite probably, back then the mechanisms were unknown or poorly understood, and along with an origin in always-suspect Soviet science (see the notorious Dr. Trofim Lysenko, head of the Institute of Genetics in the USSR, who, well, let’s just say ruined Soviet biological science with his pseudo-scientific theories and his approach, which was basically about accumulating power and prestige and little else), they may have been questionable enough not to waste limited resources on.
This rescue of Tom Patterson occurred six years ago, and apparently phage research is now underway at American medical research facilities. If, in the future, your doc brandishes a needle and says he’s going to use phage therapy on you, just nod brightly and ask to see summary of the research on it.
If, of course, you’re still conscious.
I like it when science is just out and out clever.
