Pharmacy Daily | Phage bottleneck eases

PATIENTS suffering from hard-to-treat bacterial infections across NSW will soon have better access to phage therapy.

Minister for Medical Research David Harris announced last week that the NSW Government will invest $3.5 million over the next two years to urgently address an ongoing global manufacturing bottleneck in delivering phage therapy.

Bacteriophages or 'phages' are viruses that selectively infect bacteria and can kill them.

With increasing concern for antibiotic-resistant bacteria worldwide, phage therapy research is taking place as an alternative or addition to traditional antibiotics.

Harris said, "NSW is a world leader in the development of phage therapy, however, we know there is a global manufacturing bottleneck [that is]...severely limiting supply which impacts the delivery of this treatment".

"This significant investment will allow NSW experts to increase manufacturing capabilities right here in NSW via the Westmead Institute for Medical Research (WIMR) and bypass the international issues that are slowing down access."

NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said, "phage therapies are an exciting field of medicine and could be the answer to the rapidly growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infectious diseases".

Director of the Centre for Infectious Disease and Microbiology at WIMR and Founder of Phage Australia Prof Jon Iredell said, "Phage Australia opened a new clinical trial last year to treat patients around Australia which has treated 30 patients so far".

"However, we have had to restrict the size of the trial due to limited access to high-quality phage preparations," Iredell said.

"These funds will increase local manufacturing capability at WIMR, which until now has only been able to treat one patient per month.

"This means we can double current capacity and begin to address the growing demand from around Australia and from overseas, for NSW-manufactured phage therapies."