{"id":237452,"date":"2026-05-20T03:43:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T08:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/chemists-use-sea-sponge-bacteria-to-create-new-molecules-for-drug-discovery"},"modified":"2026-05-20T03:43:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T08:43:39","slug":"chemists-use-sea-sponge-bacteria-to-create-new-molecules-for-drug-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/chemists-use-sea-sponge-bacteria-to-create-new-molecules-for-drug-discovery","title":{"rendered":"Chemists use sea sponge bacteria to create new molecules for drug discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/chemists-use-sea-sponge-bacteria-to-create-new-molecules-for-drug-discovery.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Florida State University chemists have synthesized new molecules derived from bacteria found in a Pacific Ocean sea sponge, a breakthrough for the future of drug development, particularly for rare forms of cancer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAround 50% of approved drugs are either natural products or derivatives of natural products,\u201d said Zackary Firestone, a fourth-year doctoral student in FSU\u2019s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and the study\u2019s lead author. \u201cSynthetic access to these molecules is important because it allows for easier procurement for biological testing as well as the making of new derivatives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The research team is the first to successfully synthesize two new marine natural products: tetradehydrohalicyclamine B and epi-tetradehydrohalicyclamine B. Both were isolated from bacteria that lives in symbiosis with Acanthostrongylophora ingens, a Pacific-dwelling sea sponge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Florida State University chemists have synthesized new molecules derived from bacteria found in a Pacific Ocean sea sponge, a breakthrough for the future of drug development, particularly for rare forms of cancer. \u201cAround 50% of approved drugs are either natural products or derivatives of natural products,\u201d said Zackary Firestone, a fourth-year doctoral student in FSU\u2019s [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1522],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237452","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}