CANCELED - EMD Seminar Series: Paul Turner - Leveraging evolutionary trade-offs in the development of phage therapy

The rise of antibiotic resistance warrants exploration of novel approaches to target and kill bacterial pathogens. Phage therapy offers a possible alternative, but a downside is the ability for target bacteria to evolve phage resistance. Our goal is to develop phages that steer evolutionary ‘trade-offs’: these viruses bind to virulence factors of target bacteria to select for phage-resistance that compromises the function of structures responsible for bacterial pathogenicity. This approach is demonstrated in personalized medicine, where phage ‘steering’ in patients provides clinical benefits, such as changing the infecting bacteria to become re-sensitized to chemical antibiotics and decreasing their ability to cause tissue inflammation.

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