To find out whether enlisting predatory bacteria might be crazy good and not just plain crazy, Kadouri’s lab group tested B. bacteriovorus’ killing ability against an array of bacteria in lab dishes in 2010. Antibiotics usually act on fast-growing bacteria, but within a biofilm, bacteria are sluggish and dormant, making antibiotics less effective, Kadouri says. Kadouri’s lab has shown repeatedly that predatory bacteria effectively eat away biofilms that protect gram-negative bacteria, and are in fact more efficient at killing bacteria within those biofilms.