A Dying Teenager’s Recovery Started In The Dirt
Holst, an undergraduate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, was participating in a project in which students search through local soil samples for new phages—viruses that infect and kill bacteria. Samples of Muddy and the other phage viruses made their way to the lab of Graham Hatfull, a phage expert at the University of Pittsburgh. The London team, led by the pediatrician Helen Spencer, had been treating a 15-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis—a genetic disorder that leads to persistent lung infections.
Source: www.theatlantic.com