Aleksandra Petrovic Fabijan

• PhD
• Postdoctoral Fellow at Westmead Institute for Medical Research

Background: A growing number of compassionate phage therapy cases were reported in the last decade, with a limited number of clinical trials conducted and few unsuccessful clinical trials reported. There is only a little evidence on the role of phages in refractory infections. Our objective here was to present the largest compassionate-use single-...

Phage therapy is a medical form of biological control of bacterial infections, one that uses naturally occurring viruses, called bacteriophages or phages, as antibacterial agents. Pioneered over 100 years ago, phage therapy nonetheless is currently experiencing a resurgence in interest, with growing numbers of clinical case studies being published....

Citation: Rašeta, M.; Mišković, J.; Capelja, E.; Zapora, E.; Petrović Fabijan, A.; Knežević, P.; Karaman, M. Do Ganoderma Species Represent Novel Sources of Phenolic Based Antimicrobial Agents? Molecules 2023, 28, 3264. https:// Abstract: Ganoderma species have been recognized as potential antimicrobial (AM) agents and have been used in traditional...

Background Increasing emergence of antimicrobial resistance worldwide has led to renewed interest in phage therapy. Unlike antibiotics, the lack of pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) information represents a major challenge for phage therapy. As therapeutic phages are biological entities with the ability to self-replicate in the presence of...

CRISPR-Cas systems are part of the pan-immune system of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and have been shown to limit horizontal gene transfers in that species. Indeed, isolates equipped with these systems tend to have smaller genomes and CRISPR spacers targeting integrative conjugative elements, phages, and plasmids. In this work, we investigate the genomic...

Cell wall deficient bacterial L-forms are induced by exposure to cell wall-targeting antibiotics and immune effectors such as lysozyme. L-forms of different bacteria (including Escherichia coli) have been reported in human infections, but whether this is a normal adaptive strategy or simply an artifact of antibiotic treatment in certain bacterial s...

Bacteriophages (phages) are selective viral predators of bacteria. Abundant and ubiquitous in nature, phages can be used to treat bacterial infections (phage therapy), including refractory infections and those resistant to antibiotics. However, despite an abundance of anecdotal evidence of efficacy, significant hurdles remain before routine impleme...

The applicability and safety of bacteriophage Delta as a potential anti-Pseudomonas aeruginosa agent belonging to genus Bruynoghevirus (family Podoviridae) was characterised. Phage Delta belongs to the species Pseudomonas virus PaP3, which has been described as a temperate, with cos sites at the end of the genome. The phage Delta possesses a genome...

Report: Bacterial lysis, autophagy and innate immune responses during adjunctive phage therapy in a child. https://www.embopress.org/toc/17574684/2021/13/9

Bordetella bronchiseptica is a respiratory animal pathogen that shows growing resistance to commonly used antibiotics, which has necessitated the examination of new antimicrobials, including bacteriophages. In this study, we examined the previously isolated and partially characterized B. bronchiseptica siphoviruses of the genus Vojvodinavirus (LK3,...

Adjunctive phage therapy was used in an attempt to avoid catastrophic outcomes from extensive chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa osteoarticular infection in a 7-year-old child. Monitoring of phage and bacterial kinetics allowed real-time phage dose adjustment, and along with markers of the human host response, indicated a significant therapeutic effect...

The bacterial L-form is induced by exposure to cell wall targeting antibiotics or innate immune effectors such as lysozyme and is likely to be important in many human infections. Here, we demonstrate that the osmotically fragile L-form is a distinct physiological state in Escherichia coli that is highly tolerant of oxidative stress and resistant to...

Successful phage therapy for extensive chronic osteoarticular infection in a child resulted in an initial flush of bacterial contents into the bloodstream with an inflammatory response marked by fever, local pain and upregulation of genes associated with autophagy and innate immunity. Monitoring of phage and bacterial kinetics and the human host re...

In this single-arm non-comparative trial, 13 patients in an Australian hospital with severe Staphylococcus aureus infections were intravenously administered a good manufacturing practice-quality preparation of three Myoviridae bacteriophages (AB-SA01) as adjunctive therapy. AB-SA01 was intravenously administered twice daily for 14 d and the clinica...

The effect of intravenous administration of bacteriophages manufactured under Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) conditions in severe Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia is unknown. A GMP-quality preparation of three Myoviridae bacteriophages (AB-SA01), was administered intravenously to thirteen patients with severe S. aureus infections receiving anti...

Introduction: Bacteriophage therapy is emerging as an approach to highly resistant and severe infection. Randomised studies are lacking but there have been some high-profile examples of successful salvage therapy using phages for highly antibiotic-resistant infection in critically ill patients. Here we describe the likely place of these agents in t...

Background: Polyclonal, coagulase-negative staphylococci are common contaminants of blood cultures (1), but polyclonal, coagulase-positive staphylococci (Staphylococcus aureus) have yet to be unambiguously identified as a cause of bacteremia. Objective: To describe a patient with simultaneous and persistent bacteremia from 2 strains of S aureus. Ca...

• Bacteriophage (phage) therapy is re-emerging a century after it began. • Activity against antibiotic-resistant pathogens and a lack of serious side effects make phage therapy an attractive treatment option in refractory bacterial infection. • Phages are highly specific for their bacterial targets but the relationship between in vitro activity and...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a frequent causative agent of ventilation-associated pneumonia (VAP) with high attributable mortality (~13%), which may double in patients with multi-drug resistant (MDR) infection. Bacteriophage therapy was first utilised as antibacterial therapy in the early 1900s. Losing favour in the West with the advent of antibiotics...

Phage researchers and clinicians from the Westmead Institute and Westmead Hospital brief us on how phage therapy is regulated in Australia, through the lens of their experience treating 14 patients with IV phage therapy.

Importance: The effect of IV administration of a bacteriophage cocktail produced under GMP conditions on patients with severe S. aureus infection, including complicated bacteraemia, endocarditis and septic shock, is unknown. Objective: To assess safety and tolerability of adjunctive bacteriophage therapy in patients with severe S. aureus infections...

The rise of multiple antibiotic resistance in clinically relevant bacteria has created a global crisis with increasing burden on healthcare systems. The need to optimise alternative therapies to antibiotics, particularly in high risk nosocomial settings, is therefore immediate. Bacteriophages are specialised lethal viruses of bacteria, and an under...

Background Bacteriophage therapy (BT) is a re-emerging strategy to treat antibiotic-resistant infections. Here, we describe our initial experience with intravenous (IV) and inhaled BT to treat life-threatening Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections not responding to antibiotic therapy. Emergency Investigational New Drug applica...

Bordetella bronchiseptica is a well-known etiological agent of kennel cough in dogs and cats and one of the two causative agents of atrophic rhinitis, a serious swine disease. The aim of the study was to isolate B. bronchiseptica bacteriophages from environmental samples for the first time. A total of 29 phages from 65 water samples were isolated u...

KEYWORDS: Bordetella bronchiseptica; temperature; siphoviruses; viability INTRODUCTION: B. bronchiseptica is a respiratory tract pathogen of animals and an opportunistic pathogen of immunocompromised humans. Recently, we characterized several temperate B. bronchiseptica bacteriophages belonging to Siphoviridae family, which are involved in bacteria...

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Traditional herbal medicine has become an important issue on the global scale during the past decade. Among drugs of natural origin, special place belongs to essential oils, known as strong antimicrobial agents that can be used to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Eucalyptus camaldulensis leaves are traditional...

Bordetella bronchisepticais causative agent of kennel cough, a highly contagious disease of dogs and cats. It is also one of two well known ethiological agent of progressive atrophic rhinitis, a widespread and economically important swine disease. Up to date, only bacteriophages from Podoviridaefamily, which have been induced from B. bronchiseptica...

Bacteriophages were first discovered in 1915 and used as antimicrobial tools since 1919. However, the appearance of antibiotics confined their applications. Nevertheless, phage therapy entered into its renaissance in the last few years as a consequence of frequent emergence of multidrug resistance in pathogenic microbes. The developments of newer a...

Antibacterial activity of herbal extracts is well known and confirmed by many authors. It is reported, that this activity is due to extracts chemical composition [1]. The compounds of plant extract influence and determine the antibacterial activity. Among compounds active against bacterial cell are flavonoid heterocyclic compounds such as quercetin...

The city of Novi Sad drinking wells are threatened by hydrocarbon contamination from various reasons (accidental situations, anthropogenic activities). The very presence, quantity and metabolic activity of certain physiological groups of bacteria can serve as bioindication of this type of contamination. The study including the three wells - Ratno o...

Background: Biofilms are usually studied in mono-species culture, although almost all biofilms in nature are multi-species. According to this, the role of certain bacteria in biofilm development is still not known. Aim: The aim was to examine the role of various bacteria isolated from drinking water in multi-species biofilm formation. Methods: For...