A little over 100 years ago, in 1917, a microbiologist working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris made a breakthrough discovery.

Félix d’Herelle, a Franco-Canadian scientist whose ideas were considered controversial by his peers, was experimenting in the laboratory with a form of bacteria known to cause digestive tract inflammation in insects when he noticed "clear spots" appearing on the petri dishes, indicating areas where the bacteria had inexplicably vanished.

Curious, he extended his studies to form of dysentery sickening French soldiers during the First World War.

He learnt that when he mixed a solution made up of samples lifted from these "clear spots" and applied it to a culture of the dysentery-causing pathogen, the bacteria were "quickly and totally destroyed".

What d'Herelle had hit upon were bacteriophages - viruses which "devour" bacteria.

Although he was not the first to identify them (British microbiologist F.W. Twort had already described them in 1915), d'Herelle was the first to realise and pursue their potential as a cure for deadly bacterial infections.

He pioneered 'phage therapy' and experienced great commercial and scientific success with his work during the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1927, a trial where phages were added to the water supply as a prophylaxis appeared to have halted an outbreak of cholera across several Punjabi villages in India within 48 hours, compared to 26 days for traditional sanitary interventions.

However, by the time of d'Herelle's death in 1949, research into phages had been abandoned in North America and western Europe.

Antibiotics were easier to manufacture and by 1946 penicillin was widely available in the UK.

The Herald: Félix d’Hérelle working in his lab in Paris, FranceFélix d’Hérelle working in his lab in Paris, France (Image: Getty)

This was the main - though not the only - reason for the sharp and sudden decline of interest in phage therapy.

Critics berated apparent shortcomings in phage therapy research, insisting that trials did not always meet the standards required for rigorous scientific evaluation (a lack of randomisation or control groups for example), and in the post-war years phage therapy went on to acquire a "Soviet taint" as research continued in Communist Russia and other eastern bloc countries - arguably exacerbating western suspicion against the technology.

MORE ANALYSIS: 

The tide may be turning once again, however.

On Wednesday, the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology (SIT) Committee published a report calling on the UK Government to "maximise the potential" of bacteriophages.

The committee's chair, Conservative MP Greg Clark, said they "offer a possible response to the increasing worldwide concerns about antimicrobial resistance".

It follows a year-long investigation by the committee which has gathered testimonies from a range of experts, including microbiologists and medical regulators.

Mr Clark noted that the development of phage therapies in the UK "is at an impasse": clinical trials require advanced manufacturing plants, but investment requires clinical trials to have demonstrated efficiency. A catch-22.

Until now, no phage therapy has been licensed for therapeutic use in the UK, although they have been used in isolated cases as "compassionate treatments of last resort" in patients with otherwise incurable infections.

Orthopaedic surgeons at Ninewells hospital in Dundee are among those leading the way.

In July last year, it emerged that an 84-year-old woman treated at the hospital had become the first UK patient to undergo phage therapy for a joint infection.

By the time medics turned to phage therapy, the unidentified patient had already received 18 months of failed antibiotic treatment and undergone eight operations on her badly infected hip and pelvis in a bid to cut out the infection.

The procedure was carried out by Mr Graeme Nicol, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Ninewells, in collaboration with Dr Josh Jones - the UK's only clinical phage specialist - and infectious disease consultant, Dr Daniela Munteanu.

Within two weeks of the phage treatment, the woman's infection had cleared and the wound began to heal for the first time. Within eight weeks she was well enough to be discharged home.

The virus had latched onto, invaded, and multiplied inside the bacteria until they "burst", said Mr Nicol.

He told the BBC: "It just destroys the bacteria that is there – phage comes from the Greek devour so it works its way through this infection clearing it out of the body."

The Herald: A female patient in Tayside underwent eight operations to try to remove infected joint tissue before receiving successful phage therapyA female patient in Tayside underwent eight operations to try to remove infected joint tissue before receiving successful phage therapy (Image: PA)

This is an extreme case, but it is the sort of thing we are on course to see much more of, on a much more alarming scale.

Overuse of antibiotics has left humanity facing a perilous explosion in drug-resistant microbes, with UK hospitals already seeing increasing numbers of patients dying from bacterial infections that cannot be treated.

It might not attract the headlines that global warming or artificial intelligence does, but the World Health Organisation warns that antibiotic resistance is among top ten global public health threats facing us in the 21st Century.

Phages could offer an exciting alternative.

Their supporters note that they are cheap to produce and have virtually no side effects. However, detractors caution that there are some risks.

Over-stimulation of the immune system, leading in rare cases to septic shock, is one.

More worrying, the phage viruses could transfer genes into the bacteria which end up mutating instead of killing them - potentially unleashing new and more virulent bacterial diseases.

The bottom line is that more research is needed, and that requires a safe and secure phage manufacturing plant.

The SIT committee recommends that the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in the West Midlands be used.

Opened in 2021 as part of the Covid testing response, the facility is currently mothballed and "to the astonishment of the science and health communities" has suddenly appeared for sale on property website, Rightmove, despite having received £1 billion in public money to date.

Mr Clark insisted that it should be considered instead as a UK-base for phage development "rather than be lost to the nation and to science in a firesale".

The UK Government has until March 3 this year to respond.

It remains to be seen whether the UK can become - as some hope - a "global leader" in phage medicine, but there is a certain irony that a treatment once overtaken by antibiotics could offer an escape route out of the crisis caused our excessive reliance on those exact same drugs.