Optimization of marine resources with the Dinophyt

Project ending – Horizon 2020

The oceans are an untapped reservoir of molecules endowed with unique bioactivities ranging from anti-cancer and anti-viral drugs to biopesticides.

These last 30 years, approximately 30,000 new chemical compounds have been isolated from the vast marine biodiversity, 10% of them with a demonstrated bioactivity.

Dinoflagellates microalgae, like those living in symbiosis with corals, are one of the most promising phyla producing potent bioactive molecules.

Numerous of these molecules have been functionally characterized and are known to bind the 2 most important biomedical targets that are the ion channels and the G protein coupled receptors (GPCR).

Unfortunately, these molecules are complex and difficult to synthesize at industrial scale level, leaving as single option to culture the dinoflagellates in photobioreactor (PBR) from which the molecules are isolated. Conventional PBR using bubbles or pales for respectively CO2 intake and stirring are not compatible with the dinoflagellate culture that are extremely shearing forces sensitive.

Additionally, the poor photosynthesis capacities of the dinoflagellates impose to compensate this feature by large CO2 quantities intake. The problem being that such CO2 quantities, using bubbling systems, creating important shearing forces, are detrimental for dinoflagellates.

 

In collaboration with the university of Aix-Marseille and an EU funding (EASME PH 1 : 866736), PLANKTOVIE has developed a 200L-Photobioreactor (PBR) prototype, called DINOPHYT, allowing to culture dinoflagellates at industrial scale level (Patent FR1651703).

This DINOPHYT is equipped with a very efficient CO2 intake system without any bubbling. On top of this, it does not use any stirring device, what makes the maintenance easy, cost-effective and safe.

Thanks to our technology, we are able to produce dinoflagellate biomass at high scale level, giving access for the first time to the drug discovery, the agri-food and the biopesticides markets.