Algae to produce Human Protein

Pharmaceutical companies could substantially reduce the expense of costly treatments for cancer and other diseases produced from mammalian or bacterial cells by growing these human therapeutic proteins in algae—rapidly growing aquatic plant cells that have recently gained attention for their ability to produce biofuels.

That's the conclusion of a study, published online this week in Plant Biotechnology Journal, which sought to determine whether seven diverse human therapeutic proteins could be produced in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a green alga used widely in biology laboratories as a genetic model organism, much like the fruit fly Drosophila and the bacterium E.coli.

The scientists reported in their paper that all of the algal-produced proteins in their study showed biological activity comparable to the same proteins produced by traditional commercial techniques. And because algae cells can be grown cheaply and quickly, doubling in number every 12 hours, they noted that algae could be superior to current biological systems for the production of many human therapeutic proteins.

What makes algae particularly attractive compared to bacterial and mammalian systems, the scientists say, is its ability to produce proteins cheaply and at very large scale. With algae currently being produced at about $3 per kilogram at commercial scale, the researchers estimate that making recombinant protein would cost about 60 cents per gram prior to purification.

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Veronica Cassandra