Dr. Hans Wildschutte, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Bowling Green State University, is leading research at the University on the discovery of new antibiotics and alternative treatments in the fight against multi-drug resistant pathogens.

One focus of Wildschutte’s research is phage therapy, a reemerging treatment first discovered in 1917 that uses viruses to infect and kill bacteria. The viruses, called phage, attach to and enter the pathogen and release additional virus particles, breaking open the cell and killing it.

“Phage therapy is not FDA-approved, but it is being used in a case-by-case basis for terminally ill patients,” Wildschutte said. “People are dying. What other choices do we have?”

Funded by a grant from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the research is concentrated on a bacterial pathogen called Pseudomonas aeruginosa, declared by the WHO as one of the most difficult bacterial infections to treat. It commonly infects the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients.

Wildschutte, in collaboration with Dr. Ray Larsen, associate professor of biology at BGSU, has identified about 25 phage that will kill antibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa. That research is shared with a phage bank and made available to other researchers and doctors.

“If anyone needs any of these viruses, they can reach out to us and see if ours can infect the pathogen they’re working with,” Wildschutte said.

The interaction between the phage and the pathogen is so specific that identifying the right virus is complex and time-consuming.

“It’s just so specific,” he said. “So specific that the same virus can’t necessarily cure two people infected with the same pathogen.”

Phage therapy has shown some success and was used in the United States for the first time in 2016. Dr. Tom Patterson, a psychiatry professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), was infected with an antibiotic-resistant superbug while vacationing in Egypt.

Patterson’s wife, Dr. Steffanie Strathdee, an infectious disease epidemiologist and global health expert at UCSD, alerted medical staff to the idea of phage therapy after researching unconventional cures. It ultimately saved her husband’s life, Wildschutte said.

“Tom was on his deathbed,” Wildschutte said. “He was on a ventilator and in a coma for about a month. A week after they gave him his first injection of phage, he woke up. It was remarkable, and he is still alive and well.”

BGSU alumnus Matthew Henry, who previously worked in Larsen’s lab and is now at the Naval Medical Research Center, was involved in isolating one of the phage used to save Patterson.

Strathdee provides support for the University’s Cystic Fibrosis Foundation grant.

Wildschutte, Larsen and Dr. Kathryn Kauffman, assistant professor in the Department of Oral Biology at the University at Buffalo, recently submitted a $2.2 million grant proposal to NIH to further research phage therapy over the next five years.

Because of the proven success with Patterson and other clinical cases, Wildschutte said phage therapy is predicted to become the new treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections.

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