March 28, 2025 | Brittney J. Miller
From the Depths
FAU researchers are scouring the seas for potential cancer treatments.
The field of marine biotechnology searches seas near and far in pursuit of new human products.
For Florida Atlantic University’s Cancer Cell Biology Group, the focus since 1984 has been curing cancer. And it has been making progress, says principal investigator Esther A. Guzmán.
The researchers use a ship and submersible to collect marine invertebrates like sponges. Chemists isolate and extract chemicals from the organisms, creating a library of compounds. Guzmán’s lab tests the compounds for activities that combat human cancers, including specific gene mutations or signs of cancer cell death.
So far, their findings include Furospinosulin-1, a compound from a sponge that’s active against aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. They’ve also found that compounds HB-337, HB-029 and HB-367 — all from marine sponges — inhibit growth of pancreatic cancer cells.
Altogether, the six-person FAU Cancer Cell Biology Group has identified more than 100 natural products with cancer-fighting properties. From there, the compounds must be synthetically replicated and then approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Only one of the group’s identified compounds has made it into clinics so far.
“We’ve only scratched the surface. There’s so much that we don’t know about the oceans,” Guzmán says. “There’s so many different resources that are there. It’s just waiting for the right person.”
Psychedelic Startup
A Tampa company aims to develop a new generation of psychedelic drugs — sans hallucinatory side effects — to treat a range of neurological conditions.
After a postdoctoral position in antibiotics research, Jackie von Salm faced a trifecta of challenges: Her father was diagnosed with early-stage dementia. Her older sister was struggling with addiction. And Vancouver, Canada, where she was living at the time, was experiencing an opioid crisis.
The trifecta propelled von Salm to get involved in pharmaceuticals — specifically, research surrounding brain health and mental illnesses. She eventually co-founded Psilera, a Tampa-based biotech company, to focus on drug discovery and development surrounding psychedelics.
Her research uses new derivatives of psychedelics like psilocybin and DMT — which have proven benefits for brain diseases involving mental health, neurodegeneration and addiction, von Salm says — as a base. Her five-member team then tweaks the natural compounds to reduce unwanted hallucinogenic effects, leaving behind the targeted treatments.
Psilera joined the University of South Florida’s Connect Incubator in 2020. Since then, the company has created six compound families and filed 13 patents.
The team’s focus thus far has been on frontotemporal dementia, the same disease that afflicted von Salm’s father. The researchers hope to receive FDA approval on their lead drug candidate, PSIL-006, within four years.
“Our goal was to increase accessibility beyond what current drugs are out there by making these non-hallucinogenic derivatives,” von Salm says. “They’re causing (impacts) in the brain that we’re not really seeing with any other drugs on the same level. They have a ton of promise that I think has really been under-appreciated for a long time.”
Nurturing Startups
UF’s biotechnology incubator is transforming the biotech landscape.
Sid Martin Biotech, a biotechnology business incubator, sprouted at the University of Florida in 1995. Since then, 9% of all Florida biotech companies have graduated from the program.
The 32,500-sq.-ft. incubator is 12 miles away from the UF campus, turning rural Alachua into a mass of biotech businesses. It offers 22 wet labs, onsite staff and more than $2.1 million in shared scientific equipment. It can house up to 16 biotech companies, supporting a variety of research areas including gene therapy, regenerative medicine, biopharmaceuticals and more.
“You just don’t see these world-class incubators generally being spawned in such small communities, but it has worked really well over the test of time to create a thriving biotech ecosystem,” says director Karl LaPan. The incubator also has a companion, mixed-use facility in downtown Gainesville.
More than 85% of companies that go through Sid Martin Biotech have survived over the past 30 years.