[S3-4] Towards a future phage medicine based on metagenome analysis
Dysbiosis have a great impact on the pathology of the host and the treatment such as fecal microbiome transplantation (FMT) has been attracting attention. Enteric symbiotic pathogens (pathobionts) that are directly involved in the pathogenesis of diseases have been identified one after another, and controlling pathobionts may be useful for disease prevention and treatment. Since antimicrobial agents with broad spectrum may kill beneficial bacteria other than pathobionts, thereby promoting dysbiosis, a pathobiont-specific control method is highly desirable. The commensal microorganisms in the human intestinal tract consists of bacteria, viruses, and fungi. The majority of intestinal viruses are not viruses that infect our cells, but bacteriophages (phages), whose host are commensal bacteria. Phages have been used as a useful tool to kill bacteria as phage therapies. Until now, there has been little evidence for phage therapy targeting intestinal pathobiont, and the effective use of intestinal phages has not yet been achieved. We have generated the original method for genome analysis of intestinal phage for the practical use of phage-based medicine. Based on genome analysis, we have established the method to identify phages that regulate pathobiont, and will discuss our research on the use of host-specific lytic enzymes obtained from phage genome information.