Bacteria-killing gel heals itself while healing you

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Bacteria-killing gel heals itself while healing you

McMaster researchers aggregate trillions of phages into new form

McMaster University researchers have developed a new gel made entirely from viruses that kill bacteria.

Antibacterial gel, which can be targeted to attack specific forms of bacteria, holds promise for many beneficial applications in medicine and environmental protection.

Among many possibilities, it could be used as an antibacterial coating for implants and artificial joints, as a sterile growth medium for human tissues or in environmental cleaning operations, explains Zeinab Hosseini-Doust, chemical engineer.

His laboratory, which specializes in developing technical solutions for infectious diseases, has developed, extracted and packaged so many viruses - called bacteriophages, or simply phages - that they spontaneously assembled into liquid crystals and, using a chemical binder, formed into a gelatin-like substance that can heal by its cuts.

Yellow in color and similar to Jell-O jelly, a single milliliter of the antibacterial gel contains 300 trillion phages, which are the most numerous on Earth, exceeding in number all other organisms combined, including bacteria.

"Phages are everywhere around us, including inside our bodies," explains Hosseini-Doust. "Phages are the natural predators of bacteria. Wherever there are bacteria, there are phages. What is unique here is the concentration we were able to obtain in the laboratory to create a solid material."

The field of phage research is rapidly expanding, especially as the threat of antimicrobial resistance increases.

"We need new ways to kill bacteria, and bacteriophages are one of the promising alternatives," says Lei Tan, a doctoral student at the Hosseini-Doust laboratory and co-author of the article describing the research, published today in the Chemistry of Materials journal. "Phages can kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria."

Dr. Hosseini-Doust says that phage DNA can easily be modified to target specific cells, including cancer cells. Thanks to a Nobel Prize winning technology, phage display, it is even possible to find phages that target plastics or environmental pollutants.

Being able to shape phages into solid forms opens up new opportunities, just as their usefulness in disease control is becoming a reality, she says.