Future Perspective
Bacteriophages have already offered innovative solutions in anticancer therapies, in vaccine design and other medical problems, so they will be proposed for increasing number of medical applications. Since no decrease in cancer disease frequency can be expected in realistic prognoses for upcoming years, all novel strategies will be urgently needed. According to recent prognostics, multidrug resistance will also be increasing challenge for the medicine and bacteriophages are recently proposed as a serious alternative to ineffective antibacterials. Most life-endangering multidrug-resistant infections are acquired in hospitals and other healthcare units, which often affect cancer patients. Therefore, medicine will take advantage of combination of anticancer (engineered) and antibacterial (natural) phage activity in therapies.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
This work was supported by the Polish Ministry of Science (grant no. N N401 147539). P Miernikiewicz is a recipient of the 'Start' grant Foundation for Polish Science. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.
Ethical conduct of research
The authors state that they have obtained appropriate institutional review board approval or have followed the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki for all human or animal experimental investigations. In addition, for investigations involving human subjects, informed consent has been obtained from the participants involved.
Future Microbiol. 2014;9(7):861-869. © 2014 Future Medicine Ltd.
