Episode 38: An antibiotic expert on her body's stinging betrayal

Natalie Ma knows a lot about antibiotics. She's familiar with the consequences of antibiotic resistance and the side effects of these essential drugs from her work at Felix Biotechnology, the biotherapeutics company she cofounded. So it was particularly daunting when what she thought was a run-of-the-mill urinary tract infection wasn't abated by the standard antibiotics.

The conversation stems from her First Opinion essay, "My company is developing new antibiotics. My resistant infection showed me we need them now." To hear more about antibiotic resistance, you can listen to episode #9 of the First Opinion Podcast with researchers David Hyun and Rachel Zetts on the far-reaching effects of these "superbugs."