New collection of bacteria-eating viruses to tackle hospital superbug
Date: 1.12.2025
Potential treatments for one of the world's most dangerous hospital superbugs have been found in a surprising location – hospital toilets.
An international team of researchers led by the University of Southampton have comprehensively cataloged a new collection of bacteria-eating viruses called phages sourced, in part, from hospital wastewater.
The phages in the collection have been shown to be effective against different strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae—a type of bacteria that has become a serious threat in hospitals because of its growing resistance to multiple antibiotics.
While phages that target Klebsiella are increasingly being documented in research, their clinical use has been slowed by fragmented access to data on phages and which bacteria they target.
To speed up research and treatment development, the researchers have made the new collection Klebsiella Phage Collection open source and publicly available. It means scientists everywhere can both use and build on it. Researchers can request samples of phages and bacterial strains for their own studies, compare results across labs, and even contribute new phages and strains to the collection.
Image source: Rothschild-Rodriguez et al. (2025), Nucleic Acids Research.
