[Antibacterial applications of bacteriophages]. / Les applications antibactériennes des bactériophages.

In the 1917 article in which Félix d'Hérelle describes his first observations and proposes the name of bacteriophage, he also reports the first use of these viruses to treat bacterial infections, thus giving birth to phage therapy. Soon after antibiotics supplanted bacteriophages. Today, bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics become a growing public health issue worldwide. This situation has revived research aiming at developing the antibacterial activity of bacteriophages to treat patients as well as diseases in animals and plants. In fact, the areas of applications of bacteriophages as antibacterial are widening as current solutions of chemical nature are questioned. This review summarizes the basic principles of therapeutic applications of bacteriophages and presents recent data in areas where commercial exploitation is occurring or about to emerge.

[A century of research on bacteriophages]. / Un siècle de recherche sur les bactériophages.

Bacteriophages have a prominent place in the living world. They participate to our understanding of the living world through three main aspects : (i) the dissection of the most intimist aspects of viral infection molecular mechanisms (molecular biology), (ii) the description and functioning mechanisms of ecosystems (ecology), and (iii) the adaptive dynamics of integrated viral and host-cell populations (evolution). This review looks back at the genesis of these fundamental findings and draws a picture of the most active fields of current research.