High murine blood persistence of phage T3 and suggested strategy for phage therapy

• Published in: BMC research notes Vol. 12; no. 1; pp. 560 - 5
• Main Authors: Serwer, Philip, Wright, Elena T, Lee, John C
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 05.09.2019; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Age; Animal welfare; Animals; Antibiotics; Average electrical surface charge density; Bacteremia; Bacteremia - blood; Bacteremia - therapy; Bacteria; Bacterial infections; Bacteriolysis; Bacteriophage T3 - physiology; Bacteriophage T7 - physiology; Blood; Care and treatment; E coli; Electrophoresis; Experiments; Female; Gel electrophoresis; Infectivity; Innate immune systems; Laboratory animals; Medical research; Mice, Inbred C57BL; Microbial drug resistance; Pan-antibiotic-resistant bacteria; Phage therapy; Phage Therapy - methods; Phages; Rapid phage characterization, strategy for; Research Note; Sepsis; Sepsis - blood; Sepsis - therapy; United States > US; Pan-antibiotic-resistant bacteria; Innate immune systems; Average electrical surface charge density; Rapid phage characterization, strategy for; Bacteremia
• ISSN: 1756-0500; 1756-0500
• DOI: 10.1186/s13104-019-4597-1

Our immediate objective is to determine whether infectivity of lytic podophage T3 has a relatively high persistence in the blood of a mouse, as suggested by previous data. Secondarily, we determine whether the T3 surface has changed during this mouse passage. The surface is characterized by native agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE). Beyond our current data, the long-term objective is optimization of phages chosen for therapy of all bacteremias and associated sepsis. We find that the persistence of T3 in mouse blood is higher by over an order of magnitude than the previously reported persistence of (1) lysogenic phages lambda and P22, and (2) lytic phage T7, a T3 relative. We explain these differences via the lysogenic character of lambda and P22, and the physical properties of T7. For the future, we propose testing a new, AGE-based strategy for rapidly screening for high-persistence, lytic, environmental podophages that have phage therapy-promoting physical properties.