Breakthrough discovery in the fight against superbugs

The research, led by the National Laboratory of Biotechnology at the HUN-REN Biological Research Centre in Szeged, involved health institutions from five Eastern European countries, the National Centre for Public Health and Pharmacy (NNGYK), the National Laboratory for Health Security, and Eszter Ari, assistant professor at the Department of Genetics, Head of the Bioinformatics Research Group, and PhD students András Asbóth and Balázs Bohár from ELTE.

There can be hundreds of variants of multi-resistant bacteria within a single species. By analysing samples from hospitals in Eastern Europe, the research team identified the different strains of Acinetobacter baumanii and compared the data with bacterial variants from other continents, plotting geographical and temporal distribution in a complex system. The resulting global map not only shows the regions of the world where the same strains of the pathogen occur, but also provides an excellent characterisation of the spatial and temporal distribution of each strain.

The researchers found that

the spread of multi-drug resistant bacteria follows a star-like pattern,

typically originating in hospitals in the capital with a high patient throughput and spreading to rural institutions. Superbacterial variants spreading nationally from capital cities are relatively slow to change, so the spread patterns can be used to predict which subtypes are likely to appear in hospitals over the next few years at national, regional or even city level.

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect and destroy only bacteria, leaving human cells intact. However, for bacteriophage therapies to be effective, a specific phage must be found for each variant within each bacterial species. The use of phage therapy is further complicated by the fact that multi-drug resistant bacterial infections can take up to one to two weeks to reverse, which is not enough time to identify the variant bacteria and to find and produce a bacteriophage that is effective against it.

The researchers have now used the bacterial map to discover that, although there is a huge diversity within species, only a few variants predominate in a region. If only there were at least 8-10 different bacteriophage formulations tailored to a particular region,

80 percent of hospital-acquired infections caused by a given bacterium could be treated.

Animal experiments have also shown that effective phage combinations can be created against the strains found in the Eastern European region. And if we know which countries have roughly the same bacterial variants infecting hospitalised patients, a global collaboration could enable more effective clinical trials with targeted phage formulations. The current research gives hope that, like stem cell therapy or gene therapy, widely available phage therapies will become a reality in clinical practice in the next decade.

Source: HUN-REN