Urban life dermopurifying active ingredient from the sea

 Some macroalgae of economic interest have been extensively studied and used. Nevertheless a huge number of macroalgae remain little known as they cannot be easily collected in their environment, because of size issue, ephemeral state, epiphytism (living at the surface of another algae), etc. 

To create value from this unexplored biodiversity, Seppic proposes Celebrity™ a new technology, developed by Biotechmarine, for macroalgae cell culture. 

The technology starts with isolating macroalgae cells from a single drop of marine water, or from colonised shells, rocks or other algae. From just Brittany, and more precisely, Brehat archipelago’s remarkable biodiversity, a bank of macroalgae cell strains of potential interest has been built. After isolation work to obtain mono-specific cultures, strains are cultivated, at first, in small volumes (in autotrophic conditions), and then through scale-up in order to reach industrial scale (Fig 1). One of the main difficulties in this process is to keep cells viable during the scale-up. Culture conditions such as salinity, nature of nutrients, mixing, gas introduction, temperature and light are adjusted to obtain an optimal biomass quality. Then the active molecules, trapped inside cells, are collected thanks to a precise extraction method.