BBC: Tea, honey, hops and sponges: The antibacterials hunt

What do tea, beer, honey and marine sponges have in common? They are all among the natural products Welsh scientists are targeting in the hunt for sources of new antimicrobials. With the increasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics, the need to find new agents to tackle dangerous pathogens - many of them in hospitals - is acute. Therefore, Cardiff University's School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science has turned to some unlikely Welsh sources - including a few found in ancient remedies. And nothing could be more traditional than the time-honoured remedy of honey.So, the university enlisted the help of bees as prospectors in its pursuit of plant-derived anti-bacterial drugs and treatments.

Now for Beer. Hops have been used for hundreds of years as a flavouring additive within beer. And they found in the early 18th Century that hops which were added to beer prevented it from spoiling so people started thinking that hops must be antibacteria. It is considered to be used its derived compounds which could be effective at tackling hospital superbug MRSA and even the "massive problem" of bovine tuberculosis by using hops as a foodstuff for cows.

Tea contains compounds called polyphenols that contribute to kill bacteria. Cardiff, in collaboration with Aberystwyth University, has looked at developing a tea to treat "super bug" clostridium difficile (C.diff) - the UK's principle cause of hospital-acquired infection.C.diff is susceptible to certain polyphenols found in tea. And in pursuit of the most benign brew the university teamed up with a tea company, analysing samples from the firm's 37 plantations across the globe. And they were able to show that tea from east Kenya was the most effective.

But perhaps the most alternative of antimicrobial sources under the team's microscope are marine sponges found off the Swansea coast. Sponges have a brief history of producing "novel pharmaceuticals", with Caribbean species having provided the basis for cancer drug Cytarbine in the 1950s. These organisms in temperate zones have adapted to harsher life. It means that they express some molecules which are there for competitive advantage.In this way, sponges have become adept at creating powerful molecules which are affective at killing cells.