December 12, 2024
CALGARY — A 75-year-old, Calgary-area man has become the first in Western Canada to have an antimicrobial-resistant infection in his prosthetic hip joint treated with bacteriophages – using viruses to kill bacteria.
Boyd English broke his hip while working in the Yukon in 1973. Following a hip replacement, he didn’t experience any issues until 2013 when he had to have another surgery as a result of a ranching injury. A rare post-operative complication of that surgery resulted in the persistent infection.
Because of the recurring infection, English has had his mobility severely restricted, spent 16-18 hours a day in bed, and been in constant pain. He has since undergone multiple surgeries to have the dead and infected tissue cleared away and the site “washed out” with antibiotics, but these efforts have proved only temporarily successful.
However, this newest treatment, using bacteriophages, has proven to be promising.
English underwent a surgical procedure on Nov. 20 that introduced the bacteriophages to the infected area, followed by twice-daily intravenous phage infusions for 14 days.
“I already feel much better,” he says. “I hope I can continue to improve.”
Dr. Stephen Vaughan, an Alberta Health Services infectious diseases specialist and University of Calgary clinical associate professor, obtained Health Canada approval for the experimental treatment, which was administered as part of a research study.
“This is, in effect, a Hail Mary attempt to save Mr. English’s leg,” Dr. Vaughan says. “We are cautiously optimistic this will cure the infection and provide some enduring improvement in his quality of life.”
While antibiotics act like a blanket neutralizer on bacteria, bacteriophages are more like assassins that target specific bacteria. They infect those bacteria, then replicate until the bacteria burst, amplifying the benefit at the site of infection while leaving other cells unharmed.
Dr. Vaughan reviewed the medical literature and consulted with other clinician-scientists around the world who are working with bacteriophages, including Dr. Greg German in Toronto. He was referred to Qeen Biotechnologies, a Canadian company that isolates and specially formulates a treatment of bacteriophages based on samples of a patient’s specific infection.
“We are excited to contribute to this groundbreaking study,” says Nancy Tawil, CEO of Qeen Biotechnologies. “Our extensive library of bacteriophages enables us to precisely screen for specific infections and develop customized therapeutic blends with the potential to deliver highly effective, targeted treatments.”
Bacteriophage therapy was studied long before the development of antibiotics, but then largely abandoned when antibiotics proved so effective. Now, with the growth of anti-microbial resistance, bacteriophage therapy has reemerged as a promising alternative.
Dr. Vaughan says, to his knowledge, only a handful of patients in Canada have received bacteriophage therapy, including an Ottawa patient who had an infection similar to English’s. A large-scale trial is currently underway at the Mayo Clinic in the U.S.
Anyone interested in supporting phage therapy research can make a donation here: https://engage.ucalgary.ca/Phage_Therapy.
Alberta Health Services is the provincial health authority responsible for planning and delivering health supports and services for more than four million adults and children living in Alberta. Our mission is to provide a patient-focused, quality health system that is accessible and sustainable for all Albertans. Our current focus is on reducing emergency department wait times, improving EMS response times, increasing access to surgeries, and improving patient flow.
