Beata Żyszka-Haberecht, Ewa Długosz, Michał Żerek, Jacek Lipok

Microalgae – perspectives for the use of biologically active substances in the pharmacotherapy of civilisation diseases
2024-08-26

Introduction. Microalgae, as a fast-growing, solar-powered ‘biofactories’, are suitable biotechnological platforms available to use for the production of biopharmaceuticals and human nutraceuticals.

Aim: Consider the potential use of GRAS microalgae: Spirulina sp., Chlorella sp., Dunaliella sp., Haematococcus sp., Schizochytrium sp., Porphyridium cruentum, Crypthecodinium cohnii and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in the pharmaceutical industry on the basis of their biochemical and physiological properties.

Materials and Methods. A review presents current scientific information on the promising use of bioactive compounds from microalgae in the pharmaceutical field. Specialized medical and health databases including PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Medline, Access Medicine, and Science Direct (Elsevier) were accessed and searched via the Main Library of the University of Opole.

Results. Information that focuses on the potential and future use of microalgae in pharmaceuticals was selected. An extensive range of bioactive metabolites that can be extracted from microalgae have distinctive properties such as antibacterial, antiviral, anticancer, nutritive and protease inhibitory. Microalgae are promising phytotherapeutic agents because of the possibility to use new natural active substances in the prevention and complementary treatment of civilization diseases. Microalgae are seen in a very favorable light in terms of the possibility of discovering new, natural medicines. These photosynthetic microorganisms exhibit many favorable characteristics, such as rapid growth rate, low cost of maintaining cultures, carbon neutrality, relative ease of scaling up cultures and modifying cellular composition following the application of abiotic stress and induction of metabolism in the desired direction.. What is more, several microalgae have obtained GRAS status, which makes using these algae as cell factories for pharmaceutical purposes very attractive.

Conclusions. Despite the exciting potential of microalgae, there are still many technical challenges to overcome before they can be used to produce pharmaceuticals on a commercial scale. Microalgae-derived bioactives may help to improve the treatment of some of the most prevalent human diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Simultaneously, future microalgae efforts must focus on: safe evaluation of transgenic strains, development of recombinant protein standards under GMP conditions, preclinical studies and full clinical trials. In the face of these challenges, the future of microalgae drugs looks very promising.

Keywords: microalgae, biological activity, pharmaceuticals, civilisation diseases, preventive healthcare.

© Farm Pol, 2024, 80(4): 225–239