It is well known that bacterial biofilms formed by pathogens are 100 times more resistant to antimicrobial agents than planktonic cells, making it extremely difficult to cure biofilm infections despite the use of antibiotics, which poses a serious threat to human health.
Therefore, it is urgently necessary to develop promising alternative antimicrobial therapies to reduce the burden of drug-resistant bacterial infections caused by biofilms. As natural enemies of bacteria, bacteriophages (phages) offer the advantages of high specificity, safety, and non-toxicity, and have great potential to combat and eliminate pathogenic bacterial biofilms, and are considered alternatives for the treatment of bacterial diseases.
This paper provides an overview of the composition, structure, and formation process of bacterial biofilms, briefly discusses the interaction between phages and biofilms, and summarizes several strategies based on phages and their derivatives against biofilms and biofilm-caused drug-resistant bacterial infections, in order to develop new, safe, and effective treatments for biofilm-based infections and to promote the use of phages in safeguarding human health.
