MINI REVIEW article
Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol.
Sec. Antibiotic Resistance and New Antimicrobial drugs
Harnessing Phages to Tackle Antimicrobial Resistance: A Saudi Arabian Perspective
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Medical Laboratory, College of Applied Medical Sciences in Al-Kharj, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Al-Kharj 11942, Saudi Arabia
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The worldwide antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threat continues to grow, causing an estimate of 4.71 million deaths during 2021. Scientists predict it could lead to 10 million deaths each year by 2050 unless effective solutions are developed. The government of Saudi Arabia implemented the AMR Action Plan (2022–2025) and participated in the 4th Global High-Level Ministerial Conference on AMR (2024) to address this issue. However, ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae and carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii remain major threats in Saudi Arabia. Bacteriophage therapy offers a promising additional treatment approach as phages specifically attack bacteria. They also evolve and demonstrate effectiveness against bacteria that form biofilms. This review evaluates Saudi Arabia's readiness for phage-based therapy implementation through an analysis of both local and worldwide antibiotic resistance data.
Keywords: Bacteriophage, antimicrobial resistance, phage therapy, Saudi Arabia, antibiotic
Received: 10 Sep 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Alrafaie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Alhassan Alrafaie, a.alrafaie@psau.edu.sa
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