Phage therapy

Good luck, Helen. I hope it goes well on Wednesday.

Thanks for all the good postings!!!
Harry

Please let us know whether the Phage therapy was a clinical trail and if any doctor in particular was mentioned in the commercial.

That would be great Linda, look forward to more details.

I have been following phage studies and I am not clear if this would work for pseudomonas that are antibacterial resistant and if it therefore eradicates the pseudomonas.

A huge step forward for people with CF and non-CF Bronchiectasis with mucoid pseudomonas!

Alison

Customized Phages can be developed if your pseudo is resistant to the standard Phages. Even with Phages the Pseudomonas is usually knocked back significantly but not eradicated. But side effects are not supposed to be an issue. Also using Phages and antibiotics together is not a conflict and can be very effective.

This is a really helpful discussion of phage therapy for those of us who are new to this idea. It’s exciting to think that, between drug trials and phage therapy, there will be more options for those of us who have NTM (Mac in my case).

Does anyone have any idea when it will be available in the US and/or Canada (which will likely be some time after the US)?

I found this by googling: Mayo Clinic's Phage Therapy Program, also known as bacteriophage therapy
, uses viruses to target and kill certain types of bacteria. The program was launched in 2019 by the Center for Individualized Medicine
. Gina Suh, M.D., is the director of the program.

There is currently a phage trial for people with bronchiectasis and pseudomonas called the Tailwind study:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05616221?cond=Pseudomonas%20Aeruginosa&term=Bacteriophages&rank=3
Best,
Linda Esposito

I wouldn't be eligible for this study as I have bronchiectasis and mac. I’ve contacted researchers for a number of studies that I’ve seen here and on bronchiectasis NTM facebook groups and they all seem to be limited to US residents and I am from Canada. I would be interested in trials/studies that are available to residents of Canada as well.
Thanks for keeping us up to date on what’s happening with bronchiectasis and NTM research.

Good morning,

Just talked to Dr. Dupont from UZ Leuven. He is such a respectable person! Very decent, very honest and respect his patients. He spent 30 mins thoroughly discussed phage therapy, answered all my questions and possible treatment methods. He is a real doctor.

The whole process is 1) provide the medical information to the hospital, 2) Give the sputum culture to laboratory and they test whether there is phage to your bacteria, if yes, 3) Return to Belgium to receive the treatment for 6 weeks. Every week, there is new medication ( phage). It is hard to ship the phage so it is better to receive the treatment in person.

As I am an international patient, there may be an option to send the sputum culture from USA to Belgium instead of going there in person. I will discuss with my doctor to see whether he can do this for me.

Phage is still in experimental stage and they have only two MAC patients and no successful cases yet. And these two patients are both using phage as a salvage. That means, they have tried all other therapies and none of them work. But a good thing is that phage therapy has no side effects from all of his patients (including patients of other illnesses).

So I am hesitating whether I should move forward. Anyone interested in seeking therapy in Belgium based on above? The total cost should be around $2000- $4000. It is kind of appealing to me as I really hesitate to go thorough antibiotics.