Poster Presentation Australia and New Zealand Society for Extracellular Vesicles Conference 2023

Isolation, characterization, and immunomodulatory effects of extracellular vesicles from Arthrospira (Spirulinaplatensis (#64)

Mohammad Farouq Sharifpour 1 , Suchandan Sikder 1 , Yide Wong 1 , Matt Field 1 , Tamara Thomas 1 , Jamie Seymour 1 , Robert Courtney 1 , Alex Loukas 1
  1. James Cook University, Smithfield, QLD, Australia

Spirulina, a highly nutritious cyanobacterium, is recognised as a superfood. Numerous studies have documented Spirulina’s diverse health benefits. However, our understanding of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in cyanobacteria remains limited compared to other bacteria. Aiming to bridge this gap, we successfully purified EVs from Spirulina for the first time. We developed a modified method combining simple techniques to concentrate and purify Spirulina EVs. Fractionation was achieved using size-exclusion-chromatography. EV size and concentration were determined using a Tunable-Resistive-Pulse-Sensing method. The crude EV population exhibited a mean diameter of 100nm and 5.0×1011 particle/mL concentration. Previous research suggested that EVs derived from another cyanobacterium (Synechococcus elongatus) can elicit a beneficial immune response. In our investigation, we performed intraperitoneal injections with 20µg EVs into IL-4/IL-13-reporter 4C13R mice to observe immune responses. This led to significant neutrophilia and reduction of dendritic cells at the injection site compared to controls. We will further investigate to observe the types of T-cell and dendritic cell responses to seek any potential benefits of Spirulina EVs, e.g., vaccine adjuvant and wound healing, to be used in biomedical/pharmaceutical industries. To gain deeper insights into the molecular properties of Spirulina EVs, we will conduct a comprehensive proteomic characterisation of EV-derived proteins using high-resolution tandem mass-spectrometry. We will analyse identified proteins for gene ontology, protein family and functional domain enrichment. We will also characterise the EVs’ miRNA cargo using miRNA-seq. In summary, we purified Spirulina EVs for the first time, observed immune responses in mice, and identified potential biomedical/pharmaceutical applications of Spirulina EVs.