Phycocyanobilin: A Potential Anticancer Therapy—A Tale of a Natural Chromophore

— Back to nature is a general theme for many research lines nowadays, where several substances that are extracted from natural sources have shown great potential in treating many diseases. Algal compounds, in particular, have drawn significant attention for being of biological importance. As cancer is one of the most diseases which causes people to suffer, all researchers and scientists exert much effort to end that suffering. Unfortunately, almost all the current applied conventional treatment methods exert serious side effects with limited therapeutic abilities. Recently, several algal value-added substances exhibited anticancer potentiality; they can be a promising alternative for cancer treatment. We extracted phycocyanin, a blue biliprotein, from Spirulina platensis SAM2021 , with content 3.11 mg/ml and purity 0.61. The obtained phycocyanobilin by methanolysis cleavage showed maximum absorption at λ max = 600 nm. It exhibited IC50 108 µg/ml for colorectal cancer cell line HT-29.