NEWPORT – Susan Meschwitz, professor and chair of the Chemistry Department at Salve Regina University, recently received a $387,466 grant from the National Institutes of Health to research new treatments for urinary tract infections.
Salve says the grant will fund small-scale new or ongoing health-related research projects, giving undergraduate students opportunities to gain significant biomedical research experience. Meschwitz said in a statement that most UTIs are caused by uropathogenic E. coli and the recurrent infection is caused by the same strain that caused the original infection.
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What Meschwitz and her students want to understand, she says, is how the bacterium enters a quiescent state within the cells of the bladder wall, essentially turning themselves off when the antibiotics were present and “waking themselves back up months later.”
“At a basic level, we’re taking a different approach than an antibiotic does,” she said.
We’re not trying to kill the bacteria; we’re trying to prevent them from talking to each other.”
The three-year project is part of a collaborative study that will be conducted with two researchers from the University of Rhode Island, Salve says.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on X at @James_Bessette.
