Spirulina is the most studied cyanobacterium species for both pharmacological applications and the food industry. The aim of the present review is to summarize the potential benefits of the use of Spirulina for improving healthcare both in space and on Earth. Regarding the first field of application, Spirulina could represent a new technology for the sustainment of long-duration manned missions to planets beyond the Lower Earth Orbit (e.g., Mars); furthermore, it could help astronauts stay healthy while exposed to a variety of stress factors that can have negative consequences even after years. As far as the second field of application, Spirulina could have an active role in various aspects of medicine, such as metabolism, oncology, ophthalmology, central and peripheral nervous systems, and nephrology. The recent findings of the capacity of Spirulina to improve stem cells mobility and to increase immune response have opened new intriguing scenarios in oncological and infectious diseases, respectively.

In orthognathic surgery, patient-specific osteosynthesis implants (PSIs) represent a novel approach for the reproduction of the virtual surgical planning on the patient. The aim of this study is to analyse the quality of maxillo-mandibular positioning using a hybrid mandible-first mandibular-PSI-guided procedure on twenty-two patients while the upper maxilla was fixed using manually bent stock titanium miniplates. The virtual surgical plan was used to design PSIs and positioning guides, which were then 3D printed using biocompatible materials. A Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) scan was performed one month after surgery and postoperative facial skeletal models were segmented for comparison against the surgical plan. A three-dimensional cephalometric analysis was carried out on both planned and obtained anatomies. A Spearman correlation matrix was computed on the calculated discrepancies in order to achieve a more comprehensive description of maxillo-mandibular displacement. Intraoperatively, all PSIs were successfully applied. The procedure was found to be accurate in planned maxillo-mandibular positioning reproduction, while maintaining a degree of flexibility to allow for aesthetics-based verticality correction in a pitch range between −5.31 and +1.79 mm. Such a correction did not significantly affect the achievement of planned frontal symmetry.

Defects of the peripheral nervous system are extremely frequent in trauma and surgeries and have high socioeconomic costs. If the direct suture of a lesion is not possible, i.e., nerve gap > 2 cm, it is necessary to use grafts. While the gold standard is the autograft, it has disadvantages related to its harvesting, with an inevitable functional deficit and further morbidity. An alternative to autografting is represented by the acellular nerve allograft (ANA), which avoids disadvantages of autograft harvesting and fresh allograft rejection. In this research, the authors intend to transfer to human nerves a novel technique, previously implemented in animal models, to decellularize nerves. The new method is based on soaking the nerve tissues in decellularizing solutions while associating ultrasounds and freeze–thaw cycles. It is performed without interrupting the sterility chain, so that the new graft may not require post-production γ-ray irradiation, which is suspected to affect the structural and functional quality of tissues. The new method is rapid, safe, and inexpensive if compared with available commercial ANAs. Histology and immunohistochemistry have been adopted to evaluate the new decellularized nerves. The study shows that the new method can be applied to human nerve samples, obtaining similar, and, sometimes better, results compared with the chosen control method, the Hudson technique.