From superfood to medicine maker, spirulina is a new cellular factory

Mix a dash of sunlight and a bucket of water with a breath of carbon dioxide, and you’ve got just the fuel to power the world’s newest biological factory: little blue-green bacteria called spirulina.

By engineering the cyanobacteria, Arthrospira platensis (spirulina) to express antibodies against some of the world’s most difficult to treat diseases, scientists at the biotech company Lumen Bioscience not only add spirulina to the ranks of traditional cellular factories like yeast and E. coli, but they also leverage spirulina’s unique biology to produce large-scale quantities of safe biologics for diseases like traveler’s diarrhea and potentially COVID-19.