Production is expensive. Phage therapy products were licensed for sale in the United States in 1930s. The Ministry of Health of the former Soviet Union routinely licensed active phage preparations for the use in humans. In the 1930s, a large US pharmaceutical company listed phages among its biological therapies and offered them for sale. Phages were used at the Institute Pasteur in Paris, France, and were sold in Eastern Europe, and all over the territory of the former Soviet Union.
Bacteria can develop resistance against both antibiotics and phages.
Developing of a new phage, on the other hand, can potentially be accomplished in days, at a much less expense. Since selection of active phages is a natural process, evolutionary arguments support the idea that active phage can be selected against every resistant bacterium, by an ever ongoing process of natural selection. Copyright 2000 Intralytix, Inc.