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Microalgae as Medicine: Advancing Antibiotics and Biologics

For the last couple of years, the University of Malta was collaborating with two National Chinese Universities on a project to develop new drugs and new methods of making them using microscopic marine algae. This was funded as a SINO-MALTA project, through . Prof. Zhihui Hao’s team at the China Agricultural University in Beijing and Prof. Zhenhui Liu’s team at the Oceanic University of China, welcomed Prof. Pierre Schembri-Wismayer from the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Biobanking at the University of Malta and the next year, the lead Professors from both teams visited Malta themselves.

The collaborative work centred around Dunaliella salina, a unicellular green alga commonly found in saltwater bodies around the world, including Malta. This alga is the natural source of the orange pigment and food additive beta-carotene, and is cultivated in huge open saltwater ponds for this reason. Our collaborative work focused on a new kind of antibiotic - a peptide antibiotic (which is much harder for bacteria to become resistant to). This antibiotic, produced by our Chinese colleagues, was tested for anti-cancer and pro-bone-forming effects, with some positive results. The rest of the work aimed to genetically modify D. salina into a ‘biological factory’ for making this peptide and eventually other medically useful molecules. The increased attention on peptides and proteins today, including therapeutics for obesity, such as Ozempic, and many modern anti-cancer drugs points towards the relevance of this field of study as a central component of a future health industry.

The fact that this alga can use just seawater and sunlight to make these drugs and fix CO2 in the bargain, shows the importance of this kind of research. Whilst this second part of the research is not complete, new memoranda of understanding have been signed or are in the process of being signed with our two Chinese partners. Locally, an intercalated medical student (good students who are allowed an opt-out of their medical course for a year to do scientific research before rejoining the course) is continuing this important research. Jeremy Vella is following the work of previous post-doc Marton Szoboszlay, trying multiple other methods and modifications to transfect the alga and get it to express foreign proteins. Of course, all this is reviewed by the University’s Biosafety committee, and requires bio-containment preparations, in coordination with ERA.

As a sideline to this work, a number of Maltese strains of microalgae which may be D. salina were isolated from water samples collected from the Salina Nature Reserve and has been sent to a Norwegian university for identification at a morphological and genetic level. This native strain may just be the basis of a future local “biologics” pharmaceutical industry, helping Malta make the jump from generics to Biogenerics and possibly in the future to our own research biopharmaceutical industry.