Bioprocessing of genetically engineered filamentous phages to underpin new therapeutic and industrial applications

在过去50年中获得的关于噬菌体（也称为噬菌体和细菌病毒）遗传学和生理学的广泛知识使它们成为开发用于制药，诊断和纳米技术应用的产品的一个有吸引力的选择。改良噬菌体在战胜传染性和遗传性疾病的战斗中显示出希望。例如，研究表明，在丝状噬菌体上显示的HIV表位可以引起t细胞和b细胞的反应，为这种影响全球约600万人的疾病的疫苗设计提供了一种新方法。修饰噬菌体可以在大肠杆菌中以高滴度合成，原则上可以采用易于大规模应用的技术进行加工。直到最近对噬菌体作为抗微生物剂的兴趣重新抬头，自30年前的一些早期研究以来，对大规模加工的研究很少关注。由于这个原因，现代生物化学工程和分子生物学的概念还没有结合起来解决所涉及的问题。拟议的研究将检验这些。随着微生物对抗生素耐药性危机的持续发展，噬菌体也有可能发挥抗生素的作用。虽然这不是本研究的主要重点，但提出的生化工程研究将涉及到这一相关领域。

The extensive knowledge of phage (also known as bacteriophages and bacterial viruses) genetics and physiology acquired in the past 50 years makes them an attractive option for development of products for pharmaceutical, diagnostic and nanotechnological applications. Modified phages are showing promise in the battle to defeat infectious and genetic diseases. For example, it has been shown that HIV epitopes displayed on a filamentous phage can elicit T-cell and B-cell responses offering a novel approach for vaccine design for a disease that affects approximately 6 million world-wide. Modified phages can be synthesised in high titres in E. coli and in principle processed by techniques readily applicable to considerable scale-up. Until a recently resurgence of interest in phages as anti-microbial agents there has been little research concern with large-scale processing since a few early studies 30 years ago. For this reason modern biochemical engineering and molecular biology concepts have yet to be brought together to address the issues involved. The proposed study will examine these. As the crisis in antibiotic drug resistance by microorganisms continues to develop it is also possible that phages will have an antibiotic role. Though this is not the primary focus of this research, the biochemical engineering studies proposed will bear on to this related field.