Dr. Jennifer Smith and entrepreneur Brant Chlebowski tell the story of their collaboration on applied aquaculture research of commercially valuable seaweeds – research that has sparked the formation of the California Seaweed Company and a new area of research in the Smith lab related to food and feed uses of local seaweeds.
This study uses the transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans PD (Parkinson's Disease) model. It demonstrated that dietary supplementation of the worms with an extract from the cultivated red seaweed Chondrus crispus decreased the accumulation of α-synulein and protected the worms from neuronal toxin-induced dopaminergic neurodegeneration. These effects were associated with a corrected slowness of movement. They also showed that the enhancement of oxidative stress tolerance and an up-regulation of the stress response genes, sod-3 and skn-1, may have served as the molecular mechanism for the C. crispus-extract-mediated protection against PD pathology. Altogether, apart from its potential as a functional food, the tested red seaweed, C. crispus, might find promising pharmaceutical applications for the development of potential novel anti-neurodegenerative drugs for humans.
There is strong evidence that seaweed compounds can have direct health promoting effects. This factsheet gives a selective overview on the proposed applications of seaweeds and seaweed compounds for medicinal purposes.