{"id":229180,"date":"2026-01-16T13:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T19:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/penn-engineers-turn-toxic-fungus-into-anti-cancer-compound"},"modified":"2026-01-16T13:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T19:06:12","slug":"penn-engineers-turn-toxic-fungus-into-anti-cancer-compound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/penn-engineers-turn-toxic-fungus-into-anti-cancer-compound","title":{"rendered":"Penn engineers turn toxic fungus into anti-cancer compound"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/penn-engineers-turn-toxic-fungus-into-anti-cancer-compound.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p> <span class=\"wp-smiley emoji emoji-face_with_colon_three\" title=\":3\">face_with_colon_three<\/span> year 2025.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Penn-led researchers have turned a deadly fungus into a potent cancer-fighting compound. After isolating a new class of molecules from <em>Aspergillus flavus<\/em>, a toxic crop fungus linked to deaths in the excavations of ancient tombs, the researchers modified the chemicals and tested them against leukemia cells. The result? A promising cancer-killing compound that rivals FDA-approved drugs and opens up new frontiers in the discovery of more fungal medicines.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFungi gave us penicillin,\u201d says Sherry Gao, Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) and in Bioengineering (BE) and senior author of a new paper in Nature Chemical Biology on the findings. \u201cThese results show that many more medicines derived from natural products remain to be found.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>face_with_colon_three year 2025. Penn-led researchers have turned a deadly fungus into a potent cancer-fighting compound. After isolating a new class of molecules from Aspergillus flavus, a toxic crop fungus linked to deaths in the excavations of ancient tombs, the researchers modified the chemicals and tested them against leukemia cells. The result? A promising cancer-killing compound [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}