Unlocking Spirulina secrets to supercharge vaccines

JCU researchers have found particles in the popular "superfood" Spirulina that could lead to significant advancements in vaccine production and effectiveness.

They investigates Spirulina extracellular vesicles (SPEV) and their potential therapeutic benefits. While safely testing on mice, Dr. Sharifpour and his team found that said SPEV has huge potential as a new class of vaccine adjuvant (substances added to vaccines to make them more effective).

"We were working on Spirulina on a totally different project, but when we realized that nobody has previously worked on extracellular vesicles, or reported on extracellular vesicle isolation from Spirulina, we jumped at that chance," he said.

"We injected them directly into mice, and we found instantaneous pro-inflammatory effects, meaning that they boost inflammation. This was not the sort of inflammation that harms you, it's an inflammation without any adverse effect.

"We injected the mice with antigenic proteins of spirulina, with this vaccine antigen and we realized that compared to when you inject this vaccine antigen alone, the Spirulina elevates the immune response to that specific protein by around 1000-fold," he said.

"It was certainly surprising and it's very much comparable to chemical adjuvants that are used in the vaccine industry today, which generally have some adverse effects.

Image source: Sharifpour et al. (2024), Journal of Extracellular Biology.