Hello, I’m Shriya Bhat from Plano, Texas in the United States.

 

What if I told you bacteria has found a new, smarter way to live? We see it in an emerging form of antibiotic resistant bacteria called bacterial biofilm: communities of bacterial cells buried underneath an extracellular matrix. I learned of biofilms devastating consequences a couple years ago when my cousin tragically succumbed to a bacterial biofilm related infection associated with cystic fibrosis. But she isn’t alone.

 

Bacterial biofilm accounts for 80% of all chronic microbial infections and hundreds and thousands of deaths annually. Yet there are currently no feasible treatments in the medical setting. So, using FDA approved concentrations of NAC, DNase, and carvacrol, I developed an inexpensive and non-toxic cocktail treatment to inhibit three pathways Pseudomonas biofilm formation.

 

Phase one: Resazurin Assay ensured bacterial cell viability in the tested biofilm. Phases 2 and 3 found that NAC 20% had a 75% biofilm inhibition efficacy and the triple combination treatment of carvacrol-DNase-NAC had a 95% inhibition efficacy as just a stand-alone treatment. Finally, the cytotoxicity assay proved that the treatment did not significantly hinder Caenorhabditis elegans motility, size, or number. The motility of C. elegans treated with the cocktail therapy is similar to that of the control group, alluding to potential mammalian safety.

 

If applied in hospitals, the cocktail treatment could serve dual purposes. First, as a prophylaxis. An unaffected immunocompromised patient could take the treatment weekly to prevent biofilm related infections. The therapy, if used in adjuvant to antibiotics, could also be used to treat infected patients, facilitating faster recovery and mitigating the need for IV antibiotics.