Open AccessPhage engineering and phage‐assisted CRISPR‐Cas delivery to combat multidrug‐resistant pathogens
Author(s) -
Khambhati Khushal,
Bhattacharjee Gargi,
Gohil Nisarg,
Dhanoa Gurneet K.,
Sagona Antonia P.,
Mani Indra,
Bui Nhat Le,
Chu DinhToi,
Karapurkar Janardhan Keshav,
Jang Su Hwa,
Chung Hee Yong,
Maurya Rupesh,
Alzahrani Khalid J.,
Ramakrishna Suresh,
Singh Vijai
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
bioengineering and translational medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2380-6761
DOI - 10.1002/btm2.10381
Subject(s) - crispr , lytic cycle , phage therapy , biology , antibiotic resistance , antibiotics , bacteriophage , microbiology and biotechnology , multiple drug resistance , virology , computational biology , virus , genetics , gene , escherichia coli
Antibiotic resistance ranks among the top threats to humanity. Due to the frequent use of antibiotics, society is facing a high prevalence of multidrug resistant pathogens, which have managed to evolve mechanisms that help them evade the last line of therapeutics. An alternative to antibiotics could involve the use of bacteriophages (phages), which are the natural predators of bacterial cells. In earlier times, phages were implemented as therapeutic agents for a century but were mainly replaced with antibiotics, and considering the menace of antimicrobial resistance, it might again become of interest due to the increasing threat of antibiotic resistance among pathogens. The current understanding of phage biology and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) assisted phage genome engineering techniques have facilitated to generate phage variants with unique therapeutic values. In this review, we briefly explain strategies to engineer bacteriophages. Next, we highlight the literature supporting CRISPR‐Cas9‐assisted phage engineering for effective and more specific targeting of bacterial pathogens. Lastly, we discuss techniques that either help to increase the fitness, specificity, or lytic ability of bacteriophages to control an infection.