phage-therapy
Phage therapy is the use of bacteriophages — viruses that specifically infect and kill bacteria — as a targeted treatment for pathogenic bacterial infections. In plant science, this approach offers a promising alternative to chemical pesticides and antibiotics for controlling bacterial plant diseases, which cause significant crop losses worldwide. Because bacteriophages are highly host-specific and environmentally benign, phage therapy holds potential for sustainable, precision management of bacterial pathogens in agriculture.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-01-01
Researchers review how combining nanotechnology with bacteriophage therapy — using viruses that kill bacteria — could overcome the limitations of both antibiotics and conventional phage therapy to fight drug-resistant bacterial infections.
Conventional antibiotics are losing effectiveness against a growing number of bacterial pathogens due to antimicrobial resistance, driving urgent need for alternatives like phage therapy.
Three core technical barriers limit phage therapy: poor stability outside a host, inability to deliver phages precisely to infection sites, and bacterial resistance to phage attack.
Nanotechnology strategies — including nanomaterial encapsulation, surface functionalization, and controlled-release carriers — directly address all three barriers and can extend phage circulation time in the body.