Millions of people in the U.S. and around the world suffer from urinary tract infections every year. Some groups are especially prone to chronic UTIs, including women, older adults, and some veterans.
These infections are typically treated with antibiotics, but overusing these drugs can make the microbes they target resistant and reduce the medicines’ effectiveness.
To solve this problem of chronic UTIs and antibiotic resistance, we combined our expertise in microbiologyand engineering to create a living material that houses a specific strain of beneficial E. coli. Our research shows that the “good” bacteria released from this biomaterial can compete with “bad” bacteria for nutrients and win, dramatically reducing the number of disease-causing microbes.
