Abstract
Current trends in the application of nanomaterials are emerging in the nano-biotechnological sector for development of medicines. Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are photosynthetic prokaryotes that have applications to human health and numerous biological activities as dietary supplements. Cyanobacteria produce biologically active and chemically diverse compounds such as cyclic peptides, lipopeptides, fatty acid amides, alkaloids, and saccharides. More than 50% of marine cyanobacteria are potentially exploitable for the extraction of bioactive substances, which are effective in killing cancer cells by inducing apoptotic death. The current review emphasizes that not even 10% of microalgal bioactive components have reached commercialized platforms due to difficulties related to solubility. Considering these factors, they should be considered as a potential source of natural products for drug discovery and drug delivery approaches. Nanoformulations employing a wide variety of nanoparticles and their polymerized forms could be an emerging approach to the development of new cancer drugs. This review highlights recent research on microalgae-based medicines or compounds as well as their biomedical applications. This review further discusses the facts, limitations, and commercial market trends related to the use of microalgae for industrial and medicinal purposes.
Highlights
The potential of marine life as a source of novel drug molecules is immense and has recently garnered interest for commercialization purposes
Since the beginning of civilization, biologically active compounds, which are obtained from a diverse range of algal and cyanobacterial community, have been widely used in a variety of industrial and biomedical aspects
Our understanding in the field of algal metabolites has significantly improved in the past decade, but there are still many challenges to their application in the medicine sector and for their nanoformulation and commercialization
Summary
The potential of marine life as a source of novel drug molecules is immense and has recently garnered interest for commercialization purposes. Camptothecin is widely recognized as an efficient anti-cancer agent in vitro, but its clinical application is limited due to its poor solubility [12,13] To address these difficulties, nanotechnology can provide a novel method to overcome the poor water solubility of hydrophobic natural marine drugs. Compared with the systemic administration of free natural bioactive molecules, utilization of nanomedicines presents unique advantages in terms of improved protection of the biological activities of the agents in a serum-rich environment, prolonged circulation periods in the bloodstream, reduced adverse effects, enhanced permeability and retention effects, improved tumor-targeting efficiency, increased release profiles, and possible integration of stimuli-responsiveness for on-demand therapeutics, among others [11,13,14,15].
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