The Perfect Predator
Photo Credit: T4 bacteriophage by Purdue University and Seyet LLC. Downloaded from NSF.gov
The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir
The incredible medical thriller of a scientist's fight to save her husband's life from a lethal, antibiotic-resistant superbug--by rediscovering a neglected therapeutic approach to killing bacteria. Steffanie Strathdee is an epidemiologist, and her husband Tom Patterson is a psychologist. Together they were vacationing in Egypt when Tom got sick. What at first seemed like a simple stomach bug soon turned out to be an infection of one of the most dangerous bacteria in the world. Antibiotics did not stop it---could anything? Steffanie scoured new and old research reports for anything that might help Tom. She found phage theory, a treatment that had fallen out of favor with the advent of antibiotic usage, but now might help Tom. A world-wide appeal to phage researchers went out and with the help of an international team Tom lived.
This book was just amazing, collaborative science at its best! I was reminded yet again why science is my passion, and how much there is still to be discovered.
There's a tie-in to biotech too. One of the companies presenting at the last Genome Startup Day was inspired by Steffanie's story. Read the Genome Startup Day blog to earn about the matchmaking service for finding phage.