ABSTRACT
The increase of scientic and industrial interests on natural compounds with benecial health effects has caused a development of functional foods and nutraceuticals that are derived from cyanobacteria. The expansion in this area results from different trends in relation to environmental issue, including the demand for natural compounds with bioactive properties and the development of clean and sustainable industrial processes. In the past few decades, research on these compounds derived from microalgae resulted in the isolation of more than 15,000 new compounds (Cardozo et al., 2007); many of these compounds have shown bioactive properties favorable to health. Microalgae combine, in a balanced way, a few properties typical of higher plants (oxygenic photosynthesis efcient and simple nutritional requirements) with biotechnological proper attributes of microorganisms, such as fast growth rates and the ability to accumulate or secrete primary and secondary metabolites. (Malcata et al., 2011).
