The urge for food security and sustainability has advanced the field of microalgal biotechnology. Microalgae are microorganisms able to grow using (sun)light, fertilizers, sugars, CO₂, and seawater. They have high potential as a feedstock for food, feed, energy, and chemicals. Microalgae grow faster and have higher areal productivity than plant crops, without competing for agricultural land, and with 100% efficiency uptake of fertilizers. In comparison with bacterial, fungal, and yeast single-cell protein production, based on hydrogen or sugar, microalgae show higher land use efficiency. New insights are given into the potential of microalgae replacing soy protein, fish oil, and palm oil, and being used as cell factories in modern industrial biotechnology to produce designer feed, recombinant proteins, biopharmaceuticals, and vaccines.

Prof. dr Maria Barbosa is Professor in Bioprocess Engineering and is Director of AlgaePARC at Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands. She has been president of the Dutch Biotechnology Association (NBV) and is a member of the European Algae Biomass Association (EABA) steering group. She holds a Ph.D. in Bioprocess Engineering obtained at Wageningen University.  She has worked at ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland, IBET, and at EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation), Germany. She presently leads the group on microalgal biotechnology and coordinates several large research programs covering the entire microalgae production chain. Her scientific interests are in microalgae strain improvement, process design and scale-up. 

Dr. Kasper Karlsson started his research career and PhD in 2011 at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, where he was part of the team that developed the unique molecular identifier strategy, now widely used in single cell sequencing experiments, to correct for amplification induced bias. In 2016 he moved to Stanford, USA, for his postdoctoral studies, where he developed in vitro model systems of tumor evolution. Using organoid technology, he showed that some aspects of early gastric tumor evolution can be recapitulated in cell culture models. Kasper is an assistant professor at Karolinska Institutet, where he develops new therapies and drug combinations for pediatric cancer, including the concept “Precision Lethality” where cell barcoding is used to identify and target cell populations that are resistant to standard of care with new drugs.

Still, the complexity of every individual cancer limits the efficacy of immunotherapy to a maximum of 20-40% of clinical patients [2]. Even if cancer genetics is correctly determined, complex and unique cancer ecosystems may prevent successful immunosurveillance. As the so-called cancer-immunity cycle – a set of processes the immune system does to eliminate cancer – is damaged in cancer patients, the task of immunotherapy is to repair the breaches in the immunity cycle, via ‘external’ support, either with mono- or combinational treatment. Thus, the main goal in the community is to achieve transformative treatment results for more patients, via better immune cancer phenotyping [3]. Nanosensor devices merged with biological species, e.g. cells or molecules of similar nanosize, offers a remarkable increase in biosensor sensitivity. Despite this success, nanobioelectronics is still underrepresented in the field of oncology. While the research area has addressed their potential applications in early cancer diagnosis less efforts have been dedicated to the therapy development and patients monitoring. In treatment monitoring, potential use cases are mostly limited by liquid biopsy, detection of circulating tumor cells or circulating tumor DNA. The recent works extend the borders of the silicon based nanosensor applications to the field of cancer immunology, i.e. contributing to the optimization of the novel CAR T cell immunotherapy for the prostate stem cell antigens as well as against fibroblasts activation proteins [4]. Here silicon nanowire field-effect transistors are used to pre-select targeting molecules for an adaptive CAR-T cell operation. Focusing on a library of seven variants of E5B9 peptide that is used as CAR targeting epitope, we performed multiplexed binding tests using nanosensor chips. The correlation of binding affinities and sensor sensitivities enabled a selection of candidates for the interaction between CAR and target modules. Furthermore, we demonstrate the ability to monitor the immunotherapeutic drugs in vivo, using the electronic platform.

In conclusions, the research landscape in the last few years has shown encouraging signs for nanoelectronics to be better represented in cancer research in near future. In particular, this approach can open new routes to perform a complex combinatorial analysis using tiny electronic chips and simultaneously screening multiple biochemical species thus facilitating the transition from conventional medicine to precision medicine in clinical oncology.

[1] “Cancer – fact sheet”, World Health Organization (website), Feb (2022).
[2] P. Sharma, et al. Cell 168 (4), 707-723 (2017).
[3] D.S. Chen, I. Mellman, Immunity 39(1), 1-10 (2013).
[4] T.A. Nguyen-Le, et al. Biosensors and Bioelectronics 206, 15 114124, (2022).
[5] T.A. Nguyen-Le, et al. Small Science 2400515, (2025).

Research is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) in frames of a Consolidator Grant (ImmunoChip, 101045415)