Sus­tain­ably exploit­ing the sea’s treas­ure trove

The barely explored mar­ine envir­on­ment has already thrown-up a vast treas­ure-trove of high-value bio­molecules. Among them are anti­c­an­cer and anti­ret­ro­vir­al drugs, anti­bi­ot­ics, nut­raceut­ic­als such as poly­un­sat­ur­ated fatty acids and caroten­oids, indus­tri­al enzymes, anti-foul­ing agents, anti­ox­id­ants with indus­tri­al and skin-care applic­a­tions and a host of oth­er poten­tial act­ive ingredi­ents for the cos­met­ic and per­son­al-care busi­ness. AEuropean research pro­ject, called BAMMBO, aims to devel­op altern­at­ive ways to cul­tiv­ate mar­ine spe­cies and har­vest bio­act­ive com­pounds, bal­an­cing envir­on­ment­al, health and eco­nom­ic con­cerns with a hol­ist­ic, cradle-to-grave approach. In par­tic­u­lar, ​“the pro­ject focused all on mar­ine inver­teb­rate life, so that included macro-algae, microal­gae, sponges, bac­teria and fungi”, says Patrick Mur­ray, prin­cip­al invest­ig­at­or at the Shan­non Applied Bio­tech­no­logy Centre of the Lim­er­ick Insti­tute of Tech­no­logy, Ire­land, and the sci­entif­ic co-ordin­at­or for the pro­ject. ​“What is lim­it­ing the com­mer­cial exploit­a­tion of this immense resource is not lack of interest, but rather lack of envir­on­ment­ally sound yet cost-effect­ive meth­ods for cul­tiv­a­tion and pro­cessing,” he says. Because of the short lead-times and poten­tial for attract­ive com­mer­cial returns, this is where most busi­ness interest is con­cen­trated right now, believes John Day, head of the cul­ture col­lec­tion of algae and pro­to­zoa at the Scot­tish Mar­ine Insti­tute in Oban, UK. ​“If you are ask­ing when com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion is likely to be real­ist­ic­ally achiev­able, it depends on the sec­tor. With bio­fuels, cost-wise, we are still out by a factor of 10 to 1,000, depend­ing on who you believe. But if you have a high enough value product, it is achiev­able now. For [the] pharma sec­tor, the pro­duc­tion costs are not the issue, but with clin­ic­al tri­als, you will have a min­im­um 15-year lead-in time.” The pro­spects of a quick return-on-invest­ment are driv­ing the field’s devel­op­ment. ​“Most people invest­ing in algae-biotech are look­ing for a rel­at­ively quick return,” Day points out, ​“with nut­raceut­ic­als, the lead-time is only a year, and the mar­ket is already there for par­al­lel products, so you see a lot of people pro­du­cing caroten­oids right now.” For example, one advance under study in Lim­er­ick centres on extract­ing caroten­oids and poly­un­sat­ur­ated fatty from microal­gae solu­tions using a super­crit­ic­al flu­id car­bon diox­ide sys­tem. ​“This elim­in­ates the haz­ards and chem­ic­al waste asso­ci­ated with tra­di­tion solvent extrac­tion. Also the yields are high­er,” says Mur­ray. Extrac­tion is recog­nised as one of the key sus­tain­ab­il­ity bot­tle­necks that needs to be addressed in scal­ing up such pro­cesses. ​“There is a cer­tain eco­lo­gic­al foot­print asso­ci­ated with solvent extrac­tion. Until recently, most microal­gae work has been on bio­fuels; there has not been so much on nut­raceut­ic­als,” says Imo­gen Foubert at the Labor­at­ory of Food and Lip­ids, Depart­ment of Micro­bi­al and Molecu­lar Sys­tems, K.U. Leuven, in Kulak, Bel­gi­um. ​“There­fore, the devel­op­ment of an effect­ive extrac­tion pro­cess, based on a more envir­on­ment­ally benign super­crit­ic­al CO₂ or a bio-based solvent, would be a help­ful con­tri­bu­tion.” New pro­cesses developed through the pro­ject are now being rolled out to the two part­ner com­pan­ies. Both are expec­ted to have entered com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion by the end of the pro­ject in 2014. Source: your​is​.com