How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis | Alexander Belcredi
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- Опубликовано: 26 окт 2024
- Viruses have a bad reputation -- but some of them could one day save your life, says biotech entrepreneur Alexander Belcredi. In this fascinating talk, he introduces us to phages, naturally-occurring viruses that hunt and kill harmful bacteria with deadly precision, and shows how these once-forgotten organisms could provide new hope against the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.
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A friend of mine got shot in Amsterdam and his leg got infected with a bacteria that was resistant to antibiotics. In the end they wanted to amputate just above the knee. Than his girlfriend, who is Russian, suggested to go to former Soviet Union republic Georgie. He got treated with phages and he kept his leg, he still plays mini-football twice a week. He was away for about six weeks.
When he told the consultant in the hospital in Brussels that he wanted to go get treatment with phages, the doctor said that it was normal for people in his situation to be desperate and try anything...but phages would not help him. That “consultant” was rather surprised to see him two months later with a cured leg.
Billie Bleach then what happen to the phages as it is originally a virus. It stays inside or what
@@amerhara8093
probably just stays around until the body's white blood cells feel like eating them. Their monofocus means they're unlikely to target human cells.
Appletank8 so the phages only takes effect to what kind of bacteria?
@@amerhara8093
Basically.
Phage A only attacks Bacteria A, Phage D only attacks Bacteria D, etc. Antibodies are more like chemical attacks, which are great until someone brings up a stronger hazmat suit.
did u not watch the video... @@amerhara8093
I heard about phages years ago too and thought it was going to be solution to resistant bacteria, but haven't heard anything since.
yeah its really really old, i heard it 6 years ago.
In fact phages were widely used in USSR since 1930s and are still being used in Russia (12 approved active substances), Georgia and some other Eastern European countries. Moreover, they were also used in USA in 1940s (produced by company Eli Lilly).
@@artiomvas was going to say the same
They are being used in biotechnology
I've heard about them not long ago on a kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell video.
In Russia you can simlpy buy bottle with fages (for one bacteria) in any pharmacy. And they are really cheap. But it's still not realy common because you have to find out exactly what kind of bacterial infection do you have before using fages. Wide range antibiotics is more simple way. Hope there will be company in western world that develop this topic and make it more usefull.
Do not know about phages (fortunately/unfortunately have not heard of them from regular physicians), but we have almost free acsess to antibiotics, even those with "available only on prescription" label on them, and very often they are used inappropriately by patients, contributing to our own super-puper bugs :)
It's "phages"
Just need a PCR to determine the type of bacteria that's being so problematic.
@@482jpsquared u mean "pages" right?
@@ssa3101 Phages are what they are.
How sad must it be for the individuals who had various body parts amputated as a result of a antibiotic resistant bacteria, only to find out phages could’ve saved the said body part and are openly available in Russia.
Georgia*
They are also available in Georgia and Poland. Loosing body parts because of the bacterial infection while western medicine ignored the cure for the infection. Why? So sad.
And finding out that because the capitalist can not patent them so they won’t even look at phages
One of the greatest TED speeches, optimistic news about medicine.
So Alex, have you really quit your job and dedicated your life to this new project? Or is it just another phage you’re going through?
J J da dum tsss! ;D
Now I will proceed to satisfy myself with this fish
> _grabs fish_
> _slaps J J's face_
> _leaves_
😑
Actually, yes - we founded PhagoMed in 2017. I kind of became resistant to my old job 😉.
⬆️ Troll.
I'm a nurse. I want to serve this medication to my patient with multiple antibiotics resistance bacteria. It's sad to see some of my patients stay at hospital for months because of this infection
Unfortunately for the patients, it seems that the health industry seems to care more about keeping someone in a hospital and possibly amputating body parts because they make more money with that route. If you think there will ever be a complete cure for cancer, you're living under a rock.
@@shahndeloaksong7638 there is a cure for cancer, metabolic therapy. There would never be one cure for all cancers, they're all so different. I agree with you 100%, they push these chemo drugs often with little chance of helping (and never even telling the patient that) because it makes them billions. It is absolutely disgusting. There is a cure though for the majority of cancers, check out Dr Thomas Seyfried out of Boston College on what they are doing. Of course, the NIH won't fund them and they'll be kept down every way possible because it will cost big pharma big money
"Everything new is well forgotten old" fits here perfectly.
Phages were widely used in USSR since 1930s and are still being used in Russia (12 approved active substances), Georgia and some other Eastern European countries. Moreover, they were also used in USA in 1940s (produced by company Eli Lilly).
health.ucsd.edu/news/topics/phage-therapy/Pages/Phage-101.aspx
That's truth. I have a bottle with staphylococcus phages that cured my tonsillitis right now in my fridge :) Live in Russia.
@@MikeVentrisdo they have one for streptococcus? Coz my life was ruined because of this damn bacteria
17 bacteria disliked the video
They're multiplying now.
CRAP, THEY’RE RESISTANT TO PHAGES.
😂😂
@@cojoes1423 I heard that if they evolve to become resistant to phages, they have to give up antibiotic resistance lol. I don't remember the science behind it though
Talal Edeis bacteria must have evolved from the phage attack since your comment. They’ve grown to 88 now!
I've been hearing about phages and their potential for treating bacterial infections for years. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to have been much progress made in developing phage therapy here in the west.
It's way too expensive and time consuming to make it worthwhile, antibiotics still work and are way cheaper. That'll change.
We need more people to become aware of this kind of treatment. Its been around forever but never found adoption in the western world.
ted is now becoming an education channel
*the teaching community would like to know where you live*
It used to be this good...
Austria
Very interesting video. Thanks 👍
And the best part, as both bacteria and phage evolve, the old phage drug might be obsolete, but the new phage drug will always work. This is good news for patient and drug company.
*Science makes life more interesting !*
The more we understand, the more options we can have to live a fun and easy life.
Phages will save a lot of lives. We can be happy about their help for disinfection.
First heard about phages way back in 10th standard,but building a pharma-industry, never came into mind! Well done Sir..
Phage therapy is very advanced and useful in several countries like Russia, Georgia and Poland. Maybe he tried to belittle availability of this treatment to promote his own company saying that they are only one who does it, but there are many others. And he only heard of it five years ago? Many hospitals were using it for over twenty years.
Fair points. The reality is however that we do not have a single phage drug on the market in Europe and the US. In Poland (and Brussels for that matter), phages are being used in an increasing number of last resort cases - but still cannot be used on a regular basis. So we still really need to figure out how to get well designed phage drugs through clinical trials and into our regulatory pathways. P. S. I'm not a scientists, so unfortunately I took me a long time to discover phages - which is part of why I'm really proud to be able to share that knowledge through TED.
Wow! Did I hear a sigh of relief from the inside of my brain?
I am Russian and have once been treated with phages. I have been suffering from soar throat for several month. When I visited a doctor, first the infection and its resistance to antibiotics was identified (it happened to be Pseudomonas aeruginosa with resistance to some antibiotics). My treatment was some antibiotic course followed by phage (to this bacteria). The treatment was successful. But generally the fact that some medicine is used in Russia don't says much about its efficiency. For example, the same treatment included probiotic drug (Linex), but as I learned latter it is fairly dubious whether it is actually helpful.
We here in Russia have different phages in pharmacies and you can buy them even without prescription. Usually they are packed into 20ml bottles of liquid without any particlar smell or taste. They are usually for different types of bacteria (like one for staphylococcys, other for streptococcus etc). Usually there are mixture of phages for 3-5 bacteria in every phage. And yes, you need to do sensitivity-test (like with antibiotics), because bacteria could be resistant to phages. BUT maybe couple months later there would be no resistance, because phages-industry always develop phages in order to overcome new resistance (unlike antibiotic, which is always the same unless new generation of particular type of antibiotics is developed). You can even make phage specifically for YOUR bacteria, but this is theoretically, I've never heard of this practically because I suppose it could be costly.
thats pretty cool
I learned of this years ago, and learning that the only serious research was being done in Europe tried to obtain a sample, but was unable to. With renewed talk I still can't find any.
In Russia you can buy it almost in any drugstore without any medical receipt.
The fact they can self replicate fascinates me. I remember seeing something about how the future of science is microscopic robots that could replicate and then destroy disease or tumors. Maybe phages are the next step towards a cure for cancer? I really want to study this in college and it might’ve just changed me from a dentistry major to some other biology, chemistry, or engineering. I just want to do something in stem that changes the world rather than just work a lofty dentistry job. I’ve never had any sort of passion like this before.
I enjoyed your video, and your explanation was very easy to comprehend. The question i have is can this forgotten virus be used to combat cancer?? I've lost my young daughter to cancer some years ago and still grieve the loss.
I did investigate a scientist at Ottawa Ont. Canada where he was experimenting with viruses to kill cancer. I asked if he could try this method to cure my daughters cancer and his response was that the Gov't did not allow this.. I pleaded with him with no avail, however a few years later clinical trial were started with some success. This makes me reflect had some leniency be given by Gov't regulations my daughter may still be alive today.
Regards,
Anthony Belcredi
Canada
Hello, I am Morshed from Bangladesh. My mother had urinary tract infection for the last 20 years. And doctors suggested antibiotics. She used but the disease kept occuring in different times of the year. And every doctor used culture to see what antibiotics had been used and what are still left for her to use. We used almost all antibiotics present in the market. And I don't think there's any more than 2 or 3 left to use. I really hope to see these phases being improved. Who knows, maybe we might be able to use it one day on my mother. She keeps battling. This occurs almost every month. Inflammation in kidney and UT and a lot of pain. Something the antibiotics do more damage than the infection. I wish there was a quick solution for this. And I wish we had enough money to solve it, like to go out to a foreign country for treatment 😔.
It's only legal in Europe
If you want to get it you might have to go to Europe
I love that, for almost all of the TED videos, I can speed it to 1.5x and still understand them as if they were normal conversations.
Encouraging speech on Phages, giving hope for treatments to come! 👍
Its everywhere in russia
Im confused when they say they were forgotten. Back in the 90's we had a whole section on them in my nursing school we talked about the growing science around them.
Awesome,thanks to all the great and smart people making our life better every day
Back when I started secondary school, a prestigious grammar school in London in 1976, I mentioned bacteriophages in a biology class. The class was being taught by the elderly Head of Biology in the absence of our young newly qualified regular teacher. The elderly Head of Biology (then in his fifties) refused to believe that such entities which attacked bacteria existed! I was too young to know that they were viruses - I had seen the electron microscope image in a 1969 Time Life Guide to Science book we had at home with the caption 'A molecule comes to life'. Later at university where I studied Molecular Biology, I noticed that the standard historical textbook 'Molecular Genetics' by Stent and Calendar had originally been called 'Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology'.
All I can think about is the Phage from Star Trek: Voyager
😂
Not a good phage to have
How do you produce phages? And how do you relate the bacteria which help in digestion?
This is very Interesting and Informative.
Thanks, Alex!! 😊
Extremely great video. Hope that this reaches many students of medical and biological majors. They might change the future.
Wow this is interesting, thank you. I needed this break from all the insanity going on in my country.
Thanks! 😊
I first heard about phages from a program that was on the tv in the early 90's in the UK. There was a place in Russia that had hundreds of these stored but due to the breakup of the soviet union they were struggling to preserve them, not heard of it since.
I heard about phages in high school. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Albeit I'm not a student of science but I'm fascinated by hearing this stuff! Biology is so interesting, especially on molecular level.
A friend had a wound which would never heal on his abdomen from a burn. He tried honey from New Zealand which healed the wound. I am a skeptic and read this is a successful treatment for many documented on Medline .
This is so cool! I'm lucky to be alive at this point in time.
That's very cool! Just learned about this in medical microbiology. From what I remember, there were a ton of negatives at the time; so I hope these get resolved.
Excellent speaker
Thanks, Braden! 😊
if we started to use phages based drugs against resistant bacteria, which is a good thing by the way.
is it possible that phages will evolve with time and start to infect our body cells?
No. It never happened in millions of years.
i’m in high school and lucky enough to be a part of ecybermission, and we’ve made it our mission to find phages that will attack e.coli (thanks to that lettuce outbreak) and cyanobacteria. it’s interesting stuff
Imagine phages being added to Plague Inc.
The best part is that phages evolve as well. So the bacteria evolves? No problem.
I can already imagine the future cospiracies:
EVil sCieNtiSts inJeCt VirUseS
This is a beautiful topic
I think phages are much harder to use cuz since they only fight a very specific bacteria, it would take a lot before deciding what kind of phages to use, instead of using antibiotics, since the bacteria is more specific. And there might be side effects who knows
It's not overly hard to work out what type of bacterium is causing most infections, at worst it would require a DNA analysis (not difficult, but need the right equipment, but becoming fairly common these days). Once the type of bacterium is known then only a very small amount of a phage solution is required to start the process and kill the bacterium. The side effects are far far less than the side effects from antibiotics because the phage will only interact with that strain of bacterium rather than killing all the good strains as well.
The only real potential issue is if the phage multiply and destroy too many bacterium too quickly for the body to filter the crap out of your blood. It's only really an issue with very large infections and the effect would be predictable so could be mediated by the use of a dialysis machine to assist in blood filtration until the bulk of the bacterial debris was removed. In almost all cases though, phage therapy has absolutely no side effects other than the death of the targeted bacterium.
In fact, we already are living with phages. The food we ate, the water we drank, the air we breath. They are everywhere.
The only downside of phages therapy is we need very precise strain of phages in order for the therapy to work. The same fever symptoms may be cause by hundreds if not thousands different strains of bacteria, each requires different strain of phage to work.
What's about bacterial infections, where the bacteria doesn't have a cell wall? Like the bacteria that causes Lyme-disease?
have a nice day! How could a living doesn’t have a cell wall?
Not every living organism has a cell wall. Humans for example just have a cell membrane.
Antibiotics just work when cells have a cell wall, which is the case for most bacteria but not all. The human cell doesn't get damaged from antibiotics because we don't have a cell wall, imagine the damage that would be done if not.
Superb speech..Superb subject...
i wish he had addressed the problem of mutation. Can a phage mutate to target human cells, or is that simply impossible? I suppose you run risk that it might mutate to hurt beneficial bacteria in your stomache, but that is a minor concern. So long as it can´t possibly jump to targeting human cells, i am in favor of this research.
And now, on the underside, what are the cons of using phages in this manner? And, more importantly, would bacteria be able to work their way around phages just as they have done with antibiotics?
I myself dont know but i think phages is said to be better because its a living being that attacks bacteria, not just help the immune system like vaccine and other medical drugs,
Living beings can evolve and adapt so it can fight its enemy unlike vaccines and drugs, so if the bacteria finds a way to have a leverage againts the phage the phage can adapt, evolved and find a way to counter their leverege
The big question is whether or not these companies will be allowed to patent the specific DNA of the phages they develop/discover?
Very old news actually, this technology is known for decades but It's not as cheap as common antibiotics.
This was so fascinating!
Thank you!
Excelente vídeo!
Thanks! 😊
I have a few questions about the video. Considering the characteristics of viruses that live inside or outside of other cells, is it possible to destroy them by using bacterial phages that destroy DNA inside the cell? If the above assumption is possible and drugs using bacterial phages are developed, will the infectious disease be solved?
Why are we delaying their use?
Thank you! Very good idea
👍🏼 Great Talk
But what about the phages that remained inside the leg? Did they die or what happened to them?
Good Ted talk.
Thank u for the video
This is really interesting, this is really going to be a massive breakthrough! Maybe the antibiotic resistance crisis won't come as soon as we think! :D
It was really new to me
INTERESTING‼
from Japan~~
Have I perhaps overlooked somebody else’s comments that would concern the reaction of our immune system, which would treat therapeutic bacteriophages as alien bodies and remove them? My other comment concerns bacteriophages as killers of “friendly” bacteria in industrial processes, such as lactic acid bacteria producing yogurt, cheese, sauerkraut etc., and Leuconostoc, Acetobacter, Pseudomonas, Micrococcus and other bacteria essential to the production of various industrial products. There is a lasting effort of bacteria to prevent deadly attack and efforts of the bacteriophages to overcome bacterial protection measures.
Do the phages produce enzymes or proteins to break out of the bacteria once it is infected?
The protein weakens the cells of the bacteria so that when they keep on multiplying and multiplying and multiplying inside like rabbits, the bacteria blows up and releases new generations of more phages then the process repeats. Imagine if you keep blowing air inside the balloon and you keep on blowing and blowing until it pops.
If you get the concept, then that is how it works :)
Great and informative video
Приятно видеть как медицина двигается семимильными шагами и как уменьшается количество "непобедимых" болезней.
Welcome to biotechnology my friends
Staphylococcus Aureus almost killed my firstborn. Luckily it wasn't one of them antibiotic-resistant ones. That was about 35 years ago. I think we will need those phages pretty soon, and badly!
Applied science like this has done more for humans than
Government...religion...or
Politics...put together.
Alexander Belcredi is absolutely correct.
Omg this is super interesting. I would really like to work on this field after graduation! WOW
Where antibiotics fail, the phages succeeds. But when phages fail, the antibiotics are your saviour.
Did he really forgot to mention that phages also evolve with their target bacteria?!? THAT is a major point in their favor. Bacteria gets resistant to a specific strain of phage? A new strain emerges to match it :)
No. He specifically mentioned that phages and bacteria are in an evolutionary arms race.
Fank you for your furro and informative forts on this topic. If the ferapy becomes available in the next decade, I'm sure fings will become much better for helfcare!
Fantastic ,now please how about a phage for cancers so many young people dying from this awful plague ,PD
Cancer is a mutation of normal cells not a bacterial infection so phages wouldn't be appropriate. However there are oncolytic viruses, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncolytic_virus
Thank you for this Chris ,however even though several oncolytic viruses have been approved it appears very little exciting in the way of results so far ?.
Im still confused. If the is so many phages in our body, why do we still get bacterian diseases?
If one type only hunts one bacteria they won't hunt them all so an infection is caused when a phage dosent get to it
Speaker: Think of a virus.
Me: (Thinks of a race of sentient viruses going about their business in a tiny cell-city, drinking Starbucks ATP as they go to work in a ribosome or mitochondrion) Yay! I love viruses!
_I'm going to be the first one to say this channel has amazing animations! _*_Who agrees?!_*
Eh, looks too 3D to me. Everything that's not 2D is a downgrade.
Hello,
I heard of this many times by different ways just in these last days.. and there is something makes me so confused..
What is the main role of our immune system in all of this?? If a bictiriophage is injected in blood, won't the immune system respond to it!!
Please help me understand more.
I have little knowledge in medicine but I think the immune system only responds to things that are a threat to our body's functions
@@ruileite4579 execuse me, but sorry, it does not
Litterally, if you inject a dead cell of your skin, WBCs will definitely erase it.. let's say it is not a perfect system, but it evolves to be one.
Thank you so much for the interrest. 😇
The immunesystem will respond and kill the phages. So the phages have to be injected for a period of time to kill all of the harmful bacteria.
Well I tried :p
In some documentaries I have seen they applied the phage-solution directly into the wound so no injection into the blood stream... and as the human body is in no way a completely sterile environment, I think the immune system will surely be somehow selective... I have no qualifications in medical science so this is pure speculation
Using phages right now for my sore throat
sir plzzz tell me why there are so limted number of phages against staph aureus and can't easily isolate bacteriophages against MRSA
Phages are a class of angel. So are bacteria, fungi, and parasites. Do what you will with this information.
מדהים !!!!!!!!!!
What about spores and biofilm?
Also, what about the toxins produced when the bacteria is killed off?
What happens if the bacteria becomes immune to phages
Phages evolve as well. Even tho they are not "alive". Every time they replicate inside the cell, small mistakes are made, therefor we have a variability in a sample of phages. So even if a bacteria that is resistant to one type of phage emerges, there will always be a phage that can infect it. There is a lot more to it, but i cant explain in here. Also bacteria have a " immune" system that remembers diffrerent types of phages, it is called CRISPR-CAS.
That's like saying, what if we humans can evolve an immunity to tigers...
It's like deers becoming immune to tigers.
Then the bacteria have to sacrifice their protection to antibiotics
DaSticks now imagine bacteria is a rat,bacteriophage is a snake while the antibiotic is a rat trap. Humans usually use the rat trap to kill the rat, while the snake just silently eat the rat for humans. After a long time, the rat grow smarter, they know how to avoid rat trap, and then humans start using snakes to kill rat. The rat, also grow smarter to avoid snake but then the rat forgot how to avoid the rat trap. Then the humans start using the rat trap again to kill rat. The rat again remember how to avoid the rat trap but then forgot how to avoid the snake again. It like that, bacteria can’t immune to both the bacteriophage and the antibiotic, they can immune to one of them but then can’t immune to the other one at the same times
Think of a Virus what comes to mind?
Me in 2020: Covid-19
Voting down for not even mentioning that phage therapy was invented and used by the Soviet Union. Those scientists deserve credit.
Luis Rivas Vañó 😖 Indeed so! Just one of many examples of political ideology obstructing scientific research.
The good and bad! Lovely.
Wonderful
The hero we all need but not deserve
Wow so amazing and interesting!!!
He exaggerated by a lot by saying that there are billions of bacteriopahges on our hands alone. Most possibly a few hundred thousand may exist on our entire body. Rivers, lakes and sea water have high density bacteriophage presence as there are a lot of bacterias to feed on in water bodies.
The beauty of microbiology
We know you're there ted, there is no point in hiding.
This is awesome
Thanks, Brian!
I remember hearing of bacteriophages when I was a kid back in the 60s. I wondered why the doctors weren't using them back then.
It turns out that the Soviets were using them. Unfortunately, the Western world wasn't.
But, it wasn't unknown. In fact, a movie called Andromeda Strain used the concept.