Alice Hiorns

• Uropathogenic Escherichia coli, recurrent urinary tract infections and glycosaminoglycan therapies
• BSc Hons Biomedical Sciences

Urinary tract infections (UTI) are common and painful bacterial infections of the bladder, but over-use of antibiotic treatment has caused resistance, and so some antibiotics are now ineffective. Therefore, there is a large focus on possible non-antibiotic therapies, such as glycosaminoglycan (GAG) bladder instillations. However, this is only successful in some patients, and we theorised this was due to the bacterial gene ‘picU’, which penetrates the bladder wall via enzyme secretion. I screened and tested a bank of bacteria isolated from patients suffering from recurrent UTIs, establishing the presence of picU in only some. One strain of bacteria contained the picU gene, which I subsequently deleted. This allowed for experiments using GAGs to examine the effect of picU on bacterial growth. No correlation between the picU gene and bladder wall penetration was made, but further experiments can be undertaken with the new mutant strain to further determine any link. 

Funded by: Newcastle University Research Scholarship

Project Supervisor: Dr Judith Hall