ABSTRACT
It has been estimated that by 2050, more people will die as a result of antibiotic resistance than of cancer. Phage therapy (PT) and quorum quenching (QQ) feature among the two most important realistic alternatives to antibiotics to fight bacterial infections. In this chapter, we focus on discussing how cell-cell bacterial communication, also known as quorum sensing (QS), should be considered in a broader context when it comes to its interaction with phages. Recent results have pointed out the tight link between QS and phages, which has important ecological and evolutionary repercussions in terms of phage-based treatments. We discuss the implications of these recent results for PT using a mathematical perspective. Mathematical modeling offers the possibility to simulate a wide range of long-term scenarios, which in this context may contribute to evaluating the safety of a variety of therapies, including combinations of QQ, PT, or antibiotics.
