The cancer-killing compound, called tiancimycin, was found within a historic collection of soil microbes housed at the institute. The research team’s antibody-drug combo, or ADC, showed a striking ability to kill aggressive lymphomas while ignoring healthy, noncancerous cells in blood samples donated by cancer patients.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, focused on diffuse large B cell lymphoma, one of the more common, and aggressive, subtypes of white blood cell cancers. The study results appear July 1 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society Au.