- post COVID
- Mar 5, 2007
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free college, free healthcare, free Shmurda
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Zinaida Vissarionovna Yermolyeva (Russian: Зинаида Виссарионовна Ермольева) (October 24 [O.S. October 12] 1898 – December 2, 1974) was a Soviet microbiologist of Don Cossack origin most notable for producing penicillin for the Soviet military during World War II. She was a member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences at the time of her death.
I learned about Prof Yermolyeva from Tom Ireland's recent book The Good Virus, in which he writes:
The Good Virus posted:In the summer of 1942, as German troops encircled the Russian city of Stalingrad, Nazi commanders began to receive bizarre reports of dead bodies disappearing from German field hospitals. In the dead of night, Soviet scouts were crossing the front line daringly to steal certain German corpses, before squirreling them back down into a secret underground laboratory hidden deep beneath the city.
The Germans had been suffering outbreaks of cholera for weeks as they advanced east towards Stalingrad, and the Soviets were desperate to prevent the disease from crossing the front line. Although this nasty bacterial disease had helped further deplete their enemy, it could also spread like wildfire among the soldiers and civilians crammed into a city under siege. So what on earth were the Soviets doing seeking out potentially infectious German corpses and dragging them into their territory?
Even with today's improved sanitation and modern antibiotics, cholera kills over 100,000 people every year. Spread through water contaminated with the tiny tampon-shaped bacteria Vibrio cholera, if left untreated it causes debilitating cramps, diarrhea, dehydration and, eventually, shock, coma and death. Professor Zinaida Yermolyeva, from Moscow's Institute of Experimental Medicine, had been sent by Joseph Stalin to assess the cholera outbreaks on the front and formulate a plan.
Like other physician-scientists of the era, she had spent her career in a world without effective antibiotics, trying to work out how to kill bacteria like Vibrio cholera without also killing the people infected with it. In 1942, just one genuine antibiotic substance was known to scientists - penicillin - and they were still unable to produce it in large enough quantities to treat patients. Most treatments for bacterial disease at the time were inconsistent, toxic, useless or all three. But one way to treat bacterial disease had shown more promise, especially in war, and Yermolyeva had become an expert in deploying it under battlefield conditions. It required cultivating a natural and yet invisible enemy of the cholera bacteria, which she could only find on the bodies of those who had cholera, or were close to those who had it. And so her morbid plan began. She was going to use viruses to kill the bacteria that were killing soldiers.
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Yermolyeva, looking for phages (ed: a virus of bacteria) that could keep the people of Stalingrad safe from the cholera spreading on the German side of the front line, needed to find phages that could infect and kill the exact strain of Vibrio cholera bacteria causing the local outbreaks. The best place to find these viruses was in and around the deadly bacteria itself. And the best place to find the deadly bacteria was on the bodies of people who were dying from it.
Working with the corpses in her underground lair, she soon isolated the strain of Vibrio cholera bacteria causing the disease, and then the phages living alongside it. She tested which ones could kill the bacteria most effectively, and using only rudimentary equipment, isolated them, concentrated them and purified them. The phages in their natural state had clearly not helped the dead soldiers on which they were found - but Yermolyeva aimed to create a concentrated mix of the most powerful viruses that together, might be able to overpower a nascent cholera infection before it took hold. Soon she had made enough anti-cholera phage mixture to ensure 50,000 preventative doses were given out to soldiers and civilians in the city every day.
Ahead of what would become a pivotal battle of World War Il and the defeat of the German Army, Yermolyeva is said to have received a call from none other than the commander-in-chief of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin. 'Is it safe to keep more than a million people at Stalingrad? Can the cholera epidemic interfere with the military plans?' he asked. Yermolyeva replied that she was winning on her front - no cholera outbreaks had broken out within the city. Now it was the Red Army's turn to win on theirs.
Phage therapy, the contemporary phrase for the medical intervention against bacterial infection pioneered by Prof Yermolyeva and others, is undergoing a renaissance. Traditionally viewed as 'Soviet science', the Phage Therapy Center located in Tablisi, Georgia is one of the few places where phage therapy is offered. Phage therapy is now viewed as one of the most promising tools to combat multi-drug resistant bacteria.
Although US Pharma still has virtually no interest in developing novel antibiotics, much less phage therapies, the first modern clinical trials on phage therapy began in China in 2018. Quoting a review article from researchers at the Jilin Agricultural University, Changchun, China
It is estimated that by the year 2050, upwards of 10 million people will die each year due to antimicrobial resistance. In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a list of global priority pathogens comprising 12 species of bacteria which were categorized into critical, high, and medium priority based on their level of resistance and available therapeutics (Table 1). It is crucial to discover, design, and develop new and alternative antimicrobial therapies. The current rate of resistance development far exceeds the level of antibiotic discovery and development and represents a global public health challenge.
The Chinese government placed a high priority on bacterial drug resistance and included it on the agenda of the G20 Hangzhou Summit. In order to control the development of bacterial resistance, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People’s Republic of China issued the National Action Plan for Reducing the Use of Veterinary Antimicrobials (2021–2025) and the List of Banned Drugs and Other Compounds for Food Animals. In addition, the Chinese government encourages large-scale animal husbandry to cut off pathogen infection at the source. Companies have tried to develop new antibiotics, but few are available in terms of their commercial value. Faced with the problem of increasing bacterial resistance year by year, it is urgent to find a new treatment that can replace antibiotics.
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In China, the application of phage therapy to treat clinical diseases also has a long history. The former Dalian Institute of Biological Products was the first to develop phage research and related production (used for the prevention and treatment of dysentery) in China. The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products also carried out a period of trial production around 1958. In 2017, the Shanghai Institute of Phage was established, which was the first institution to obtain the qualification for clinical treatment of bacteriophages in China. The institute launched the first ethically approved clinical trial of phage therapy in 2018 in China. Since then, teams such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences have also been working on the development of engineered phages to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections. In 2020, the Chinese team published a paper on the clinical practice of bacteriophages and proposed a new protocol of “non-sensitive antibiotic-phage combination,” providing a new strategy for the treatment of “super-bacteria” that was resistant to both antibiotics and bacteriophages. The leading enterprises of phage industrialization in China also include Qingdao Nuoan Baxter Biotechnology Co., Ltd. and Phagelux Inc. These companies applied bacteriophage formulations to animals, aquatic products, agriculture, and human health. Here, we summarize some successful cases of phage application in clinical therapy in China, hoping to promote the wider application of phage in clinical practice.
Although she probably did not foresee the rise of multi-drug resistant bacteria, Zinaida Yermolyeva understood the power of phages. She was also a fearless and crazy scientist, reportedly intentionally infecting herself with cholera to demonstrate that she could cure it using her phage cocktails. Thank you for using phages to fight Nazis, Prof. Yermolyeva.
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Sep 9, 2023 20:07
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May 1, 2024 13:43
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- Delta-Wye
- Sep 29, 2005
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Phage outbreaks are no joke, I saw one take an industrial biomanufacturing plant down for months.
nature is healing
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Sep 10, 2023 07:05
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Sep 9, 2023 20:07
