How will drug discovery help drive forward innovations in the coming year? Researchers from across disciplines at Charles River discuss which trends they expect will propel the development of novel therapeutics forward this year. Phage Therapy one of the Top 10 Drug Discovery Trends to Watch in 2019

With multi-drug resistant infections escalating, phage therapy might help us get back in the fight and beat the superbugs at their own game. The arrival of antibiotics in the 1950s heralded what many thought would be the death of dangerous infections. Unfortunately, antibiotic resistance genes, now abundant in the environment and encouraged by the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, have diminished the effectiveness of these infection fighters.

In the age of multi-drug resistance, could phage therapy be the effective alternative to antibiotics we have been searching for? Phage therapy relies on the use of naturally-occurring phages to infect and lyse bacteria at the site of infection. There are several clinical trials ongoing,  several FDA-approved phage products on the market that are being used to kill food-borne pathogens in foods. But with tools like CRISPR-Cas9, we now have a way of understanding phages and their bacterial hosts, which could open the door to using phages for selective diseases. 

Source: http://www.pharmexec.com/top-10-drug-discovery-trends-watch-2019