ISOLATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF A NOVEL BACTERIOPHAGE TO CONTROL MULTIDRUG-RESISTANT ACINETOBACTER BAUMANNII

Main Article Content

Asma Yaqoob
Aroosh Shabbir
Muhammad Aamir Aslam
Namra yunus

Keywords

Clinical, bacteriophage, host range, resistance, applications

Abstract

In order to tackle the urgent problem of multidrug-resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter baumannii infections, this work describes Phage-1, a lytic bacteriophage that has strong anti-bacterial properties. Patients in the intensive care unit with suspicision of septicemia had bacterial samples taken, and antibiotic susceptibility testing was carried out in accordance with CLSI/USA guidelines. Automated VITEK 2 system was used to assess the antibiotic susceptibility of 60 isolates of A. baumannii. Phage-1 was isolated from sewage system of a tertiary care hospital in Faisalabad using conventional screening techniques. Centrifugation, binary layer agar identification, and many rounds of isolation were used in the phage extraction and purification procedure. The Phenol Chloroform technique was used to extract DNA from Phage-1. Using a one-step growth curve analysis, the life cycle of Phage-1 was deciphered. This revealed a latent time of 30 minutes, a lysis period of 60 minutes, and a burst size of 8.6 PFU/mL. Phage-1 was shown to be resilient in thermal and pH stability testing, exhibiting substantial activity at 20-40°C and 6-8 pH as well as vulnerability to higher temperatures and severe pH values. Sixty distinct strains of MDR A. baumannii were subjected to host range studies, which demonstrated Phage-1's capacity to lyse local strains within a given geographic area. Minimum Inhibotory Concentration (MIC) was assessed using VITEK 2 system, which showed that the mostly isolates were resistant to cephalosprins, carbapenems and aminoglycosides. All strains are sensitive to Polymyxin B. This study adds important new information on how Phage-1 may be used as a therapeutic agent to treat MDR A. baumannii infections. The results show its lytic efficiency, stability, and geographic uniqueness, emphasizing the need of taking regional factors into account when developing phage-based therapies to fight bacterial illnesses resistant to antibiotics.

Abstract 205 | pdf Downloads 110

References

1. Howard A, O’Donoghue M, Feeney A, Sleator RD (2012) Aci- netobacter baumannii: an emerging opportunistic pathogen. Virulence. 3(3):243–250
2. Peleg AY, Seifert H, Paterson DL (2008) Acinetobacter bau- mannii: emergence of a successful pathogen. Clin Microbiol Rev 21(3):538–582
3. Gong Y, Shen X, Huang G, Zhang C, Luo X, Yin S et al (2016) Epidemiology and resistance features of Acinetobacter bau- mannii isolates from the ward environment and patients in the burn ICU of a Chinese hospital. J Microbiol (Seoul, Korea). 54(8):551–558
4. Huang G, Yin S, Gong Y, Zhao X, Zou L, Jiang B et al (2016) Multilocus sequence typing analysis of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in a Chinese Burns Institute. Front Microbiol. 7:1717
5. Roach DR, Debarbieux L (2017) Phage therapy: awakening a sleeping giant. Emerg Top Life Sci. 1(1):93–103
6. Hsu LY, Apisarnthanarak A, Khan E, Suwantarat N, Ghafur A, Tambyah PA (2017) Carbapenem-Resistant Acinetobacter baumannii and Enterobacteriaceae in South and Southeast Asia. Clin Microbiol Rev 30(1):1–22
7. Sharma S, Chatterjee S, Datta S, Prasad R, Dubey D, Prasad RK et al (2017) Bacteriophages and its applications: an overview. Folia Microbiol 62(1):17–55
8. Huang G, Shen X, Gong Y, Dong Z, Zhao X, Shen W et al (2014) Antibacterial properties of Acinetobacter baumannii phage Abp1 endolysin (PlyAB1). BMC Infect Dis 14:681
9. Yin S, Huang G, Zhang Y, Jiang B, Yang Z, Dong Z et al (2017) Phage Abp1 rescues human cells and mice from infection by pan-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Cell Physiol Bio- chem 44(6):2337–2345
10. Schooley RT, Biswas B, Gill JJ, Hernandez-Morales A, Lancas- ter J, Lessor L et al (2017) Development and use of personalized bacteriophage-based therapeutic cocktails to treat a patient with a disseminated resistant Acinetobacter baumannii infection. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 61(10):e00954
11. Brown ED (2004) Drugs against superbugs: private lessons from bacteriophages. Trends Biotechnol 22(9):434–436
12. Zhang Z, Schwartz S, Wagner L, Miller W (2000) A greedy algo- rithm for aligning DNA sequences. J Comput Biol 7(1–2):203–214
13. CLSI (2012) M100-S25 Performance standards for antimicro- bial susceptibility testing. Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute, Wayne
14. Huang G, Le S, Peng Y, Zhao Y, Yin S, Zhang L et al (2013) Characterization and genome sequencing of phage Abp1, a new phiKMV-like virus infecting multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Curr Microbiol 66(6):535–543
15. Mattila S, Ruotsalainen P, Jalasvuori M (2015) On-demand isolation of bacteriophages against drug-resistant bacteria for personalized phage therapy. Front Microbiol. 6:1271
16. Ceyssens PJ, Minakhin L, Van den Bossche A, Yakunina M, Klimuk E, Blasdel B et al (2014) Development of giant bac- teriophage varphiKZ is independent of the host transcription apparatus. J Virol 88(18):10501–10510
17. Harrison E, Brockhurst MA (2017) Ecological and evolutionary benefits of temperate phage: what does or doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. BioEssays. 39(12):1700112
18. Castro-Mejia JL, Muhammed MK, Kot W, Neve H, Franz CM, Hansen LH et al (2015) Optimizing protocols for extraction of bacteriophages prior to metagenomic analyses of phage com- munities in the human gut. Microbiome. 3:64
19. Tiwari R, Chakraborty S, Dhama K, Wani MY, Kumar A, Kapoor S (2014) Wonder world of phages: potential bio- control agents safeguarding biosphere and health of ani- mals and humans- current scenario and perspectives. PJBS. 17(3):316–328
20. Orndorff PE (2016) Use of bacteriophage to target bacterial sur- face structures required for virulence: a systematic search for anti- biotic alternatives. Curr Genet 62(4):753–757
21. Chen M, Zhang L, Abdelgader SA, Yu L, Xu J, Yao H et al (2017) Alterations in gp37 expand the host range of a T4-like phage. Appl Environ Microbiol 83(23):e01576-17
22. Trojet SN, Caumont-Sarcos A, Perrody E, Comeau AM, Krisch HM (2011) The gp38 adhesins of the T4 superfamily: a complex modular determinant of the phage’s host specificity. Genome Biol Evol. 3:674–686

Most read articles by the same author(s)