In 2019, a 62-year-old man from Minnesota (USA) became the first patient at the renowned American hospital Mayo Clinic to be prescribed phage therapy to treat an antibiotic-resistant infection.

Multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae entered a patient's body during knee replacement surgery. The infection was untreatable, the inflammation progressed, and the patient underwent 17 surgeries to save his leg. However, these failed to resolve the problem, and the doctor recommended amputation. However, the patient found another solution. He contacted a biotechnology company with a large library of bacteriophages—bacteria-killing viruses. The company's employees selected bacteriophages specific to the K. pneumoniae isolated from the patient and created a highly active phage preparation.

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The treatment was successful, the pathogen was destroyed, and the patient can walk again. The doctors are preparing a scientific publication on this matter, but for now they report that the effect of the bacteriophages was not limited to the destruction of the target bacteria.

In recent years, interest in phage therapy has grown sharply in the United States and other Western countries: it is increasingly being used to treat severe infections that do not respond to antibiotics, and biotech companies are launching clinical trials.

Read also: The world's first clinical trials of a recombinant phage preparation have been announced.