Magdalena Podlacha, Lidia Gaffke, Łukasz Grabowski, Jagoda Mantej, Michał Grabski, Małgorzata Pierzchalska, Karolina Pierzynowska, Grzegorz Węgrzyn, Alicja Węgrzyn
One of the hopes for overcoming the antibiotic resistance crisis is the use of bacteriophages to combat bacterial infections, the so-called phage therapy. This therapeutic approach is generally believed to be safe for humans and animals as phages should infect only prokaryotic cells. Nevertheless, recent studies suggested that bacteriophages might be recognized by eukaryotic cells, inducing specific cellular responses. Here we show that in chickens infected with Salmonella enterica and treated with a phage cocktail, bacteriophages are initially recognized by animal cells as viruses, however, the cGAS-STING pathway (one of two major pathways of the innate antiviral response) is blocked at the stage of the IRF3 transcription factor phosphorylation...
March 13, 2024: Nature Communications