In a major report today the Science, Innovation & Technology
Committee calls for steps to develop the potential of
bacteria-killing viruses - called bacteriophages or phages for
short - that can provide an alternative to antibiotics that are
attracting growing resistance.
Phages have been used as therapy for over a hundred
years, but interest has increased in recent years as the
widespread use of antibiotics is leading to alarming
antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to even the most effective
treatments. But they have never been licensed for
therapeutic use in the UK. They have only been used as
“compassionate” treatments of last resort in isolated cases of
otherwise intractable infections.
One of the problems has been an impasse: in order to be deployed
in clinical trials phages must be manufactured to the Good
Manufacturing Practices (GMP) standard. But investment in
compliant manufacturing plants will only be justified following
successful clinical trials.
Rt Hon MP, Chair of the Committee,
said: “Phages offer a
possible response to the increasing worldwide concerns about
antimicrobial resistance.
“But the development of phage therapies is at an impasse, in
which clinical trials need new advanced manufacturing plants, but
investment requires clinical trails to have demonstrated
efficacy.
“The Committee is asking the Government to consider whether the
mothballed Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in the West Midlands
could provide a suitable facility. The Laboratory, which has
already received over £1 billion of public funding, was
established by the Government to bring to an end the inadequacy
of testing capacity that so hampered the national response to
Covid. It consists of modern, secure laboratory facilities and
was meant to be an important source of national resilience
against future pandemics. But the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory
has suddenly appeared for sale on the property website Rightmove,
to the astonishment of the science and health communities. Our
Committee’s report on phages asks for the Rosalind Franklin
Laboratory to be considered for this purpose, rather than be lost
to the nation and to science in a firesale.”
The Committee recommends that the Government should consider
establishing a small GMP facility on the lines of the Catapult
network which provides shared facilities for companies who cannot
afford to make the level of investment on their own.
The Committee also calls on the Medicines and Healthcare Products
Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Department for Health and Social Care
(DHSC), and phage researchers to work together to make for a more
promising route for phage research to be funded and its products
licensed for use.
The Committee calls for:
- Awareness-raising for healthcare students and professionals
of the antimicrobial potential of phages where antibiotics have
failed or are failing
- Government and its agencies to make a definitive and positive
statement on the role of phages in the national approach to
anti-microbial resistance (AMR), which is important in research
funding decisions and for private investment in commercial phages
- The MHRA to consider allowing the compassionate use of
non-GMP phages produced in the UK for last resort medical cases
where other medical approaches have failed or are failing
- The MHRA to review how current regulations would govern
liability for clinicians and hospitals who used UK non-GMP phages
