Macroalgae: Marine players in vaccinology

Although seaweeds have been used for decades as food, medicinal plants, and nutritional supplements, their use as a vaccine production and delivery platform has been barely explored, despite the availability of several genetic tools for seaweed transformation. The present review introduces seaweeds and their valuable immunomodulatory compounds in perspective as vaccine production and mucosal delivery platform. Genetic engineering tools are reviewed for macroalgal transformation, and the recombinant proteins produced in this platform are summarized. Finally, the hurdles and opportunities on seaweed potential as a vaccine production platform and delivery vehicle are proposed. As expected, seaweeds can soon be exploited to produce vaccine candidates due to their biological characteristics, including accelerated growth, photosynthetic capacity, and bioactive compound production, as well as the genetic engineering tools available. With all these properties -plus the commercial seaweed industry- this new envisioned technology can be adopted to improve human and animal health.