Plant cell culture technology in the cosmetics and food industries : current state and future trends

The production of drugs, cosmetics, and food which are derived from plant cell and tissue cultures has a long tradition. The emerging trend of manufacturing cosmetics and food products in a natural and sustainable manner has brought a new wave in plant cell culture technology over the past 10 years. More than 50 products based on extracts from plant cell cultures have made their way into the cosmetics industry during this time, whereby the majority is produced with plant cell suspension cultures. In addition, the first plant cell culture-based food supplement ingredients, such as Echigena Plus and Teoside 10, are now produced at production scale. In this mini review, we discuss the reasons for and the characteristics as well as the challenges of plant cell culture-based productions for the cosmetics and food industries. It focuses on the current state of the art in this field. In addition, two examples of the latest developments in plant cell culture-based food production are presented, that is, superfood which boosts health and food that can be produced in the lab or at home

Exploiting the potential of additive technologies for advanced micro-cultivation solutions for microalgae and plant cells

Due to their potential to produce a great variety of valuable products bioprocesses using plant cells and microalgae are of growing industrial interest. The cultivation of eukaryotic production systems is challenged by slow growth rates, uncontrolled formation of cell aggregates, adherence to surfaces, shear sensitivity due to their huge cell size and by maintaining the productivity. Because of the high complexity of the biological systems there is only limited knowledge about the physiological and kinetic dependencies on the cultivation conditions. Therefore, advanced micro-cultivation systems are necessary enabling a detailed investigation on the micro- (cellular-scale, e.g. viability, morphology…) and macro-scale (process-scale, e.g. product formation kinetics, substrate consumption…). Additive technologies have the potential to meet these complex biological requirements. This work describes the design of two micro-cultivation environments for suspended and immobilized microalgae and plant cells by additive technologies. First, a milliliter-scale (V = 15 mL) Flat-Panel-Airlift photobioreactor equipped with optical sensors for the real-time measurement of dry weight concentration, chlorophyll fluorescence, pH, dO2 and dCO2 is presented. As a second example, we present a method called Green Bioprinting which was derived from tissue engineering bioprinting approaches and describes the fabrication of three-dimensional hydrogel-based immobilization structures for microalgae, plant cells and even structural organized co-cultures of different cell types. It was shown that the hydrogel-environment provided excellent growth and viability conditions using Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and Ocimum basilicum. The Green Bioprinting technology enables the study of cell-cell interactions (e.g. symbiotic living organisms) or the design of three-dimensional immobilization structures to perform cascaded bioprocesses

Induction of a photomixotrophic plant cell culture of Helianthus annuus and optimization of culture conditions for improved α-tocopherol production

Tocopherols, collectively known as vitamin E, are lipophilic antioxidants, which are synthesized only by photosynthetic organisms. Due to their enormous potential to protect cells from oxidative damage, tocopherols are used e.g. as nutraceuticals and additives in pharmaceuticals. The most biologically active form of vitamin E is α-tocopherol. Most tocopherols are currently produced via chemical synthesis. Nevertheless, this always results in a racemic mixture of different and less effective stereoisomers because the natural isomer has the highest biological activity. Therefore, tocopherols synthesized in natural sources are preferred for medical purposes. The annual sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) is a well-known source for α-tocopherol. Within the presented work, sunflower callus and suspension cultures were established growing under photomixotrophic conditions to enhance α-tocopherol yield. The most efficient callus induction was achieved with sunflower stems cultivated on solid Murashige and Skoog medium supplemented with 30 g l-1 sucrose, 0.5 mg l-1 of the auxin 1-naphthalene acetic acid and 0.5 mg l-1 of the cytokinin 6-benzylaminopurine. Photomixotrophic sunflower suspension cultures were induced by transferring previously established callus into liquid medium. The effects of light intensity, sugar concentration and culture age on growth rate and α-tocopherol synthesis rate were characterized. A considerable increase (max. 230 %) of α-tocopherol production in the cells was obtained within the photomixotrophic cell culture compared to a heterotrophic cell culture. These results will be useful for improving α-tocopherol yields of plant in vitro cultures