As for the future directions, what temperature is phage most successful in? Is there a specific goal for the temperatures experiment or would it be more of an overall testing of how phage reacts to the different temperatures?
Hey Farida! As far as we know right now, it is most successful at body temp. The goal of testing it at different temps would be to assess how long its shelf life would last.
Hey Zoe! Great question. One of the biggest issues with clinical trials is that certain phage are so host specific that they may only work on one subspecies of one bacteria. What we need is a phage cocktail that can work on a wide range of host species from an antibiotic resistant bacterium like TB or A. baumannii.
Excellent presentation. I was wondering, where exactly did you get the soil sample from campus? Do you think you would have gotten different results from a different sample of soil from another location on campus?
Hey Daniel! it was collected across from those large potted plants by the rec center. I do! I think if it was closer to a body of water, we may have gotten much different results. All of the phages in our class were siphoviradae. Unfortunately due to COVID we didn’t collect our own samples and all samples from the class were collected from pretty similar locations.
Hey Tyler! We would want to test its killing power on M. smeg to see if it has the same effect every time its plated. We would also want to test its effectiveness as different temperatures to see if it is shelf stable. These experiments would help determine if it is worth it to do further testing and get it into the library for a potential treatment option.
As for the future directions, what temperature is phage most successful in? Is there a specific goal for the temperatures experiment or would it be more of an overall testing of how phage reacts to the different temperatures?
Hey Farida! As far as we know right now, it is most successful at body temp. The goal of testing it at different temps would be to assess how long its shelf life would last.
What kinds of discoveries or technologies would be necessary to conduct a successful clinical trial in humans?
Hey Zoe! Great question. One of the biggest issues with clinical trials is that certain phage are so host specific that they may only work on one subspecies of one bacteria. What we need is a phage cocktail that can work on a wide range of host species from an antibiotic resistant bacterium like TB or A. baumannii.
Excellent presentation. I was wondering, where exactly did you get the soil sample from campus? Do you think you would have gotten different results from a different sample of soil from another location on campus?
Hey Daniel! it was collected across from those large potted plants by the rec center. I do! I think if it was closer to a body of water, we may have gotten much different results. All of the phages in our class were siphoviradae. Unfortunately due to COVID we didn’t collect our own samples and all samples from the class were collected from pretty similar locations.
What would be your next steps into using your phage as treatment?
Hey Tyler! We would want to test its killing power on M. smeg to see if it has the same effect every time its plated. We would also want to test its effectiveness as different temperatures to see if it is shelf stable. These experiments would help determine if it is worth it to do further testing and get it into the library for a potential treatment option.