Dr. Amy Nett: Biofilm, there are a few different ways to think of it. When I’m explaining it to patients, a simplistic model, I think, is to just explain it as almost a sugar igloo that bacteria or microbes use to protect themselves. When you’re using a biofilm disruptor, it’s essentially to poke holes in that sugar igloo. That’s a very simplified model of what biofilm is, but more specifically, biofilm is when you have a group of microorganisms and the cells are stuck either to each other and/or to a surface. It’s an extracellular polymeric substance, meaning that it’s composed of a number of different components, generally that the microbes themselves use as a protective agent. It’s going to contain things like extracellular DNA, proteins, and polysaccharides. It can form on living or nonliving surfaces. We see biofilms on catheters sometimes. That can be a reason for infection of indwelling catheters, but again, it’s composed of this medium in addition to this group of microorganisms. It’s created in response to many different factors. I won’t go into all of that. There’s a lot more information I’m sure that you can google, but the idea of it is it’s essentially the slime, or again, when I describe it to patients, I just say to think of it as a sugar igloo. It’s a protective coating that the microbes are using to protect themselves from our own immune system and also from the antibiotics that we’re giving them.