https://phys.org/news/2018-11-chemical-synthesis-potent-antibiotics.html

"Typically, a lot of steps would be needed to get vancomycin in a form that would allow you to attach it to something else, but we don't have to do anything to the drug," says Brad Pentelute, an MIT associate professor of chemistry and the study's senior author. "We just mix them together and we get a conjugation reaction."

This strategy could also be used to modify other types of drugs, including cancer drugs, Pentelute says. Attaching such drugs to an antibody or another targeting protein could make it easier for the drugs to reach their intended destinations.