The solution to one of the world’s most pressing health crises might be hiding in your toilet

Could a lifesaving virus be right under your bum?

Scientists at the University of Southampton are enlisting the public to become citizen scientists in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

At the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, which opens to the public at 6pm on Tuesday 1 July in London, visitors will be invited to help find phages, tiny viruses that could be key to combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

At their exhibit, ‘Fighting superbugs’, Southampton scientists will be asking the public to collect and send water samples from their homes, local parks or rivers, or even their toilets. These samples will be analysed by researchers on the hunt for phages that could help fight resistant bacterial infections.

The World Health Organization identifies AMR as one of the top global public health threats, estimated to be directly responsible for over one million global deaths and contributing to over 4.7 million deaths annually in 2021. When bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, infections become harder to treat, leading to longer illnesses, higher healthcare costs, and a greater risk of death from infections that would normally be manageable. AMR threatens the safety of a wide range of medical procedures, from chemotherapy and organ transplants to something as routine as a tooth extraction, because even minor infections resulting from these interventions could become life-threatening without effective antibiotics.

Phages present a promising alternative. Unlike antibiotics, they are highly specific, targeting harmful bacteria without affecting healthy microbes. They also multiply at the site of infection, providing continuous, focused treatment until the bacteria are eradicated. This “self-amplifying” ability could make phage therapy a sustainable and efficient solution for tackling resistant infections.

In the UK, phages can now be used under existing regulatory routes for unlicensed treatments in individual patients, and new guidance from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) aims to accelerate the safe development of licensed phage-based medicines for wider clinical use. Phage therapy has already been used in the UK and globally to treat patients with life-threatening, antibiotic-resistant infections, including bone infections, sepsis, and cystic fibrosis-related infections, when antibiotics alone have failed.

Dr Franklin Nobrega, lead researcher on the project, said:

“The threat of antimicrobial resistance grows year on year, and we urgently need to find alternative treatments to reduce our reliance on antibiotics. Phages have enormous potential. They are everywhere and can provide incredibly precise, targeted treatments for resistant infections.”

“We know that phage therapy can be effective in treating resistant infections. However, there are billions of different phages, each targeting a specific microbe. By finding more of these phages, we can improve our chances of beating AMR. In this arms race against resistant bacteria, every new phage we discover adds a valuable weapon to our arsenal.”

Over 500 visitors to the Summer Science Exhibition will be provided with free sampling kits. Prior to posting the water sample back to Southampton for analysis, participants will be asked to name their phage (in the hope the scientists isolate a phage from their sample) and upload the coordinates of where their sample was taken to phage-collection.org. Once the researchers have the samples collected by the public, their next step will be to determine if any of the 500+ citizen scientist samples contain therapeutically relevant phages. Participants will be able to track the progress of their own sample, and the overall findings of the project, on the website.

In addition to contributing to groundbreaking research, attendees at the Summer Science Exhibition will have the chance to explore the world of phages by talking to researchers, taking part in a VR experience that explains how to apply phage therapy therapeutically, and building their own Lego model of a phage. The Southampton researchers will also gauge public opinion on the use of phage therapy as an alternative to antibiotics and use this opinion to help them design new therapies.