Upwards of 400 million people (mostly women) get a urinary tract infection annually, a figure that’s on the rise and which is associated with a worrying global crisis of antibiotic failure.

Despite their apparent simplicity, UTIs are anything but straightforward: they are difficult to diagnose and treat, and often return again and again. When you delve into what’s happening deep within the bladder, where ancient but canny bacteria are pitted against our seemingly more advanced defence systems and often come out the winner despite antibiotics, it becomes clear why they are so challenging.

Professor Jenny Rohn is head of the centre for urological biology in the department of renal medicine in the Division of Medicine at University College London. Jenny runs a research laboratory studying urinary tract infection, an incredibly common malady that afflicts hundreds of millions of people each year and inflicts a tremendous healthcare burden.

Despite this, like many diseases primarily affecting women, UTI has been historically understudied, and there have been no new therapies developed since Alexander Fleming discovered antibiotics nearly a century ago. Jenny and her team are working hard to find better ways to treat this notoriously tricky infection, where the bacteria have evolved many devious strategies to subvert our immune defences. Follow her on Twitter:   / jennyrohn  

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