Key Points
One company is aiming to treat infections with a different strategy: arming tiny viruses called bacteriophages with Crispr...
Whereas antibiotics kill bacteria indiscriminatelyincluding the beneficial kindphages have evolved to be selective in the strains or species of bacteria they target..
Often used in cases of chronic or life-threatening infections when antibiotics fail, scientists comb through collections of phages searching for ones that best match the problematic bacteria living inside a patient...
Once inside their target cells, these phages use the Crispr system to home in on a crucial site in the E. coli genome and start degrading the bacterias DNA...
The Crispr-enhanced phages allow for degradation of the bacterial genome and would bypass several mechanisms by which bacteria can become resistant to phage, says Saima Aslam, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who studies phages but is not involved in the development of the Locus therapy..
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