"And six hours after we fed them the mannoside, we looked at the number of bacteria in their bladders," she says. "And we saw that there was a significant reduction in the amount of bacteria in the bladder. And most noticeably, this is actually quicker than the traditional antibiotics."

As well as clearing infection, mannoside given in advance prevented infection, presumably because the bacteria couldn't bind to the bladder surface and infect the tissue.

Janetka says that because of the way they work, the mannoside compounds should not promote the development of resistance in the bacteria, and they should be effective against strains that are hard to treat with current drugs.

"And one of the very exciting things in the paper that we all are quite excited about is that the compounds even work against antibiotic-resistant bacteria."

Janetka says in a best case scenario, clinical trials in humans could begin in a year or so.

He says the same principle - of interrupting the binding process - may also be effective against other kinds of infections.

"And so we can use the same exact technology that we've developed to design inhibitors, based on natural sugars again, that could be effective against many other types of bacteria. So this is just the beginning, in our mind."