Bacteriophages are viruses which infect bacteria. Rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has caused an increase in research in the field of alternative therapies against pathogenic bacteria. Bacteriophage therapy has shown a great potential in treating infections. In the nature bacteriophage exist that can virtually infect every known bacterial species. Because of their specificity for a certain host, bacteriophages can infect and kill even only one strain of a bacterium. In order to improve efficacy of phage therapy, diverse phages can be mixed into cocktails containing three or more different phages. This prevents, that resistance development against one phage would decrease the efficiency of the phage therapy. Phages can also be modified, thus we can insert specific genes into their genomes, thus engineered phages can target selected bacterial strain or easier lyse bacterial cell or disperse biofilms. Combining phage therapy and antibiotic therapy showed big improvements in the treatment of infections, exhibiting greater efficacy of the therapy than with bacteriophage or antibiotics alone. In addition, antibiotics that are conjugated to phages are succesfully dellivered to the site of infection because of bacteriophage specificity, providing higher local concentration of antibiotics at the site of infection. For the use of phage therapy in every day clinical practice safety, efficiacy and composition of phage cocktails must be precisely investigated, also regulations in the field of using bacteriophages as medicinal agents must be carefully examined and adjusted to enable the prudent use of such therapy in clinics.
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