Maybe you’ve had the experience of being sick, and your doctor struggling to find the right antibiotics to treat your infection. Or maybe you had to restart your treatment with different antibiotics because the first ones didn’t work.

Situations like this are becoming more and more common, as antibiotic-resistant bacteria continue to spread. At the same time, new antibiotics are being developed very slowly.

So the question is: could there be another solution?

Another way to treat bacterial infections?

One possibility is to use the natural predators of bacteria: viruses that specifically infect bacteria and destroy them. And what might surprise you is that this is not some futuristic idea. It’s an approach that has already been used to successfully treat patients, and it was developed more than a hundred years ago.

As you probably guessed by now (and, well… as the title says), today’s episode is all about phage therapy.

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If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay updated on more virology stories, please follow @virology_podcast or @karolina_science on Instagram :). The podcast is also available in Czech as “Podcast o virech”.

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Sources:

L. Zeldovich, 2024: The Living Medicine • A. Oromí-Bosch, 2023: Developing Phage Therapy That Overcomes the Evolution of Bacterial Resistance • S. A. Strathdee, 2019: The Perfect Predator • S. Uyttebroek, 2022: Safety and efficacy of phage therapy in difficult-to-treat infections: a systematic review • S. Arientová, 2025: Successful systemic phage therapy for implant-associated MRSA spondylodiscitis • S. A. Strathdee, 2023: Phage therapy: From biological mechanisms to future directions • G. F. Hatfull, 2021: Phage Therapy for Antibiotic-Resistant Bacterial Infections • Q. Yang, 2023: Regulations of phage therapy across the world • J. P. Pirnay, 2018: The Magistral Phage • R. Larcher, 2025: Phage therapy in patients with urinary tract infections: a systematic review • S. Djebara, 2025: Implementation challenges of personalised phage therapy • L. H. Lang, 2006: FDA approves use of bacteriophages to be added to meat and poultry products • D. A. Schofield, 2011: 'Bioluminescent' reporter phage for the detection of Category A bacterial pathogens

We all know the story. When Europeans set sail for the so-called “New World”, they didn’t just bring ships and cargo - they also brought deadly diseases. They introduced pathogens into regions where no one had ever encountered them before. And in some areas, these outbreaks wiped out between 50–90% of local populations within just a few years. Most of us can name the usual suspects—smallpox or influenza… But fewer people realize that measles was nearly as deadly. In fact, historians often rank measles as the second deadliest of the imported epidemics. And in today’s episode, we’re diving into everything measles.

You probably already know to be cautious, when somebody calls measles a harmless childhood disease. But how dangerous measles really is? And how common are the serious complications?

Spoiler alert: it’s far from innocent.

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If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay updated on more virology stories, please follow @virology_podcast or @karolina_science on Instagram :). The podcast is also available in Czech as “Podcast o virech”.

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Sources:

A. Ratner, 2025: Booster Shots: The Urgent Lessons of Measles and the Uncertain Future of Children's Health • J.M. Hübschen, 2022: Measles • P.M. Strebel, 2019: Measles • D.E. Griffin, 2018: Measles Vaccine • A. Lo Vecchio, 2021: Vitamin A in Children Hospitalized for Measles in a High-income Country • J.P. Byrne, 2022: Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues; chapter: Measles in the colonial Americas • M.J. Mina, 2019: Measles virus infection diminishes preexisting antibodies that offer protection from other pathogens • S. Xia, 2022: Assessing the Effects of Measles Virus Infections on Childhood Infectious Disease Mortality in Brazil • C.S. Benn, 2023: Measles vaccination and reduced child mortality: Prevention of immune amnesia or beneficial non-specific effects of measles vaccine? • WHO measles, mumps, rubella fact sheets (online, accessed 13/04/2025) • B. Deer, 2011: How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed; 2020: The Doctor Who Fooled the World

When people think about viruses, one of the first things that comes to mind is that they’re small. And to be honest, that's how I would describe them too. I mean, that’s how we discovered viruses in the first place: they passed through filters that trapped bacteria, so we knew this infectious substance had to be smaller than any known cell.

So when scientists came across the very first giant virus, they naturally assumed it must be a brand-new bacterium. In fact, this “mystery microbe” spent nearly a decade in a freezer before anyone realized it wasn’t a bacterium at all.

This discovery opened the door to an entirely new world of giant viruses, which had gone unnoticed simply because no one was looking for something so large in the virus realm. And it also raised an important question that remains controversial: If some of these giant viruses cause disease in humans?

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If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay updated on more virology stories, please follow @virology_podcast or @karolina_science on Instagram :). The podcast is also available in Czech as “Podcast o virech”.

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Sources:

B. La Scola, 2003: A giant virus in amoebae • C. Abergel, 2015: The rapidly expanding universe of giant viruses: Mimivirus, Pandoravirus, Pithovirus and Mollivirus • N. Brandes, 2019: Giant Viruses—Big Surprises • D. R. Wessner, 2010: Discovery of the Giant Mimivirus • B. La Scola, 2008: The virophage as a unique parasite of the giant mimivirus • F. Sakhaee, 2022: Detection of Mimivirus from respiratory samples in tuberculosis‑suspected patients • J. M. Claverie, 2018: Mimiviridae: An Expanding Family of Highly Diverse Large dsDNA Viruses Infecting a Wide Phylogenetic Range of Aquatic Eukaryotes • D. Raoult, 2006: Laboratory infection of a technician by mimivirus • N. Yutin, 2014: Origin of giant viruses from smaller DNA viruses not from a fourth domain of cellular life • M. Khan, 2007: Pneumonia in mice inoculated experimentally with Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus • T. J. Rowbotham, 1983: Isolation of Legionella pneumophila from clinical specimens via amoebae, and the interaction of those and other isolates with amoebae • D. Raoult, 2007: The discovery and characterization of Mimivirus, the largest known virus and putative pneumonia agent • A. Levasseur, 2016: MIMIVIRE is a defence system in mimivirus that confers resistance to virophage • J. M. Claverie, 2016: CRISPR-Cas-like system in giant viruses: why MIMIVIRE is not likely to be an adaptive immune system • J. Abrahao, 2018: Lack of evidence of mimivirus replication in human PBMCs