Microbiologist Featured in Antibiotic Resistance Articles

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued warnings about the antibiotic-resistant bacteria Shigella, insight from Associate Professor of Biological and Chemical Sciences Bryan Gibb, Ph.D., was featured in several outlets, including News Medical and AZO Life Sciences. Gibb, who is researching the therapeutic potential for viruses (phages) to treat antibiotic-resistant infections, tells News Medical that phages are “already working wonders in Eastern Europe,” where doctors in countries like the Republic of Georgia have successfully used phage cocktails to treat infections for decades. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) process for approving pharmaceuticals is not equipped to deal with bacterial agents like phages.

“They evolve quickly, just like the mutating bacteria they fight, giving them a major edge over antibiotics. But their flexible nature also makes phages difficult to evaluate in a traditional clinical trial setting,” says Gibb. To overcome this obstacle, he recommends a separate FDA approval track for phage therapy.