Background and Objectives: While Cutibacterium acnes (C. acnes) helps maintain healthy skin, it may also be an infectious agent in acne vulgaris, the most common skin disorder. Acne vulgaris can range from a self-limiting condition to a more severe condition that leaves individuals with physical and emotional scarring. Current acne treatments for C. acnes infections have had varying degrees of success, increasing complications and the rise of antibiotic resistance. The use of bacteriophage is an exciting potential that has yielded promising results. On the other hand, phage therapy is not without complications and should be addressed with caution due to the problems involved with pseudo lysogenic phage and phage resistant bacteria. The study aimed to characterise C. acnes and investigate its interaction with phage B1, and separate native endolysin from phage B1 and investigate its implication on C. acnes.
Methods: C. acnes was collected from facial skin swabs (healthy individuals), and preliminary identification of the bacteria was carried out; and to confirm this, C. acnes specific PCR was conducted, followed by testing the bacterial susceptibility to phage B1. Phage lysate was produced by infecting bacterial cells with phage B1, and it was taken forward for multistep ultrafiltration to collect endolysin from the phage.
Results: According to this study, 65% of facial skin swabs contained C. acnes, and 68% of them were susceptible to phage B1. SDS analysis of ultrafiltrate samples revealed the expected band (31KD), endolysin molecular weight.
Conclusion: Using specific endolysins to reduce the use of broad-spectrum antimicrobials may help to reduce the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Although phage therapy has been used to eradicate bacteria, this study found phage resistant C. acnes strains in commensal bacteria. Since phage endolysin degrade bacterial peptidoglycan, extracting and applying native endolysin exogenously can become an effective method of combating phage resistant C. acnes as well as sensitive C. acnes strains. While the ultrafiltration procedures were used to extract native endolysin, phage was detected in the final solutes. Future research will investigate the desired results by improving the purification of endolysin described in this study and using immobilised metal affinity chromatography to develop this concept further.
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