Day 1 :
Keynote Forum
Yasuhiro Koga
Professor, Tokai University School of Medicine, Japan
Keynote: New prebiotics targeting butyrate-producing commensals as well as bifidobacteria
Time : 10:00 -10:45
Biography:
Prof. Koga is one of the leading scientists in the medical probiotic/prebiotic science and also an opinion leader in the field of probiotics/prebiotics industries in Japan. He graduated Faculty of Medicine, Kyushu University, one of the major medical schools in Japan, in 1978, got MD there. Since 1993, he has been appointed to Professor and Chairperson, Laboratory for Infectious Diseases, Tokai University School of Medicine. He has founded Japanese Society for Probiotic Science and taken the president of it since 1998. JSPS has become a scientific partner of International Scientific Conference on Probiotics and Prebiotics since 2010.
Abstract:
The concept of prebiotics was established more than 30 years ago. While the prebiotic concept has now expanded thus includes non-carbohydrate substances and diverse categories other than foods, fructooligosaccharides (FOS) have still predominantly been used as pebiotics, because the effects of FOS exclusively act through the enrichment of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus spp., which have been classified as beneficial intestinal commensals so far. Now the commercially available FOS products are synthetic mixture of several kinds of FOS components including 1-kestose (GF2), nystose (GF3) and GF4. In our previous studies, superiority of 1-kestose to the longer-chain FOS components such as nystose with regard to bifidogenic activity was clearly demonstrated. Recently, a broader range of beneficial bacteria including butyrate-producing indigenous bacteria have been recognized and expected to be new probiotic strains. Among them, resident Faecalibacterium prausnitzii is a butyrate producer with a significant anti-inflammatory effect thus expected to be useful as a next-generation probiotic. However, this bacterium is extremely oxygen-sensitive thus can be difficult to grow industrially. On the other hand, we have clearly demonstrated a significant prebiotic effect of 1-kestose, which is the smallest component of FOS, on F. prausnitzii in the gut of humans. These findings suggest that 1-kestose has impressive potential as a new prebiotic targeting F. prausnitzii, a next-generation probiotic strain, as well as bifidobacteria.
Keynote Forum
Dr. Hanna Evelina Sidjabat
University of Queensland
Keynote: Advancing technologies and applications of beneficial microbes - one health approach
Time : 11:05-11:50
Biography:
Dr. Sidjabat is an expert in antimicrobial-resistance with 14-year research experience and probiotic development for the past 4-years. She is currently a Research Fellow within the Infectious Diseases Theme at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research (UQCCR), in which her probiotic research work is within the agreement by Uniquest (https://uniquest.com.au/) with probiotic companies. Dr. Sidjabat was the lead microbiologist and molecular microbiologist of the characterisation of microbiome of upper respiratory tract of patients with chronic rhinosinusitis, healthy participants and healthy Australian Indigenous children and children prone to otitis media within Prof. Anders Cervin’s research group. Prior to that, she was a Laboratory Research Leader within Prof. David Paterson, Infection and Immunity Theme, UQCCR for 6.5 years. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow soon after the completion of her PhD in 2007, at the Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. She is passionate in mentoring young researchers in conducting research as well in the development of research career profiles of junior researchers. She has always been at the forefront in understanding the use of newly developed technologies for infectious diseases. She has worked collaboratively with many leading microbiology laboratories nationally and internationally. To date, she has published 84 peer-reviewed articles mostly in high-impact journals. Dr. Sidjabat has supervised and mentored 35 PhD students, Postdoctoral Research Fellows, Master and Honours students, Microbiology Registrars, local and international Infectious Diseases Visiting Academics.
Abstract:
Probiotics, such as Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, S. thermophilus and Saccharomyces have been known as beneficial microbes that contribute to our health benefits. Prebiotics which are disaccharides, oligosaccharides and polysaccharides have becoming well-recognised in supporting the growth of gut microbiome especially those help in maintaining the gut health. Prebiotics and probiotics have also been introduced in animal feed market. Prebiotics and probiotics have been used to substitute the use of antibiotics as growth promoter in farm animals. This approach in positive modulation of microbiome functions area has now being expanded to aquaculture. Advancing research and development in the prebiotic and probiotics including beneficial microbes is aligned with the mission and vision in reducing antibiotic resistance globally. Current production of probiotics has been continuously moving into the no-waste to the planet approach. Advancing the technologies and applications of beneficial microbes in medicine will reduce the burden of chronic diseases. Generating beneficial microbes also reduce the burden to the environment which will also enhance the planet sustainability. One health approach has officially been announced by World Health Organization in September 2017 to be used in many aspects related to microbes including in food safety, to control zoonoses and combatting antibiotic resistance. This approach is important as humans and animals shares the eco-systems. One health approach is proposed to be applied for beneficial microbes here. Professional with a range of expertise, medical practitioners, nutritionists, public health, animal health, plant health and environment might also be appropriate in advancing technologies and applications of beneficial microbes. Challenges and benefits of clinical trials in providing the claims of beneficial microbes will also being covered. Market research in supporting the economical evidence of the benefit of prebiotics and probiotics should be advanced. Views of future applications of beneficial microbes including the technologies for bioremediation which is important supporting the ecosystem will also being covered here.
Keynote Forum
Judith Perez Peralta
St. Luke’s Medical Center, Philippines
Keynote: Do probiotics decrease recurrence of vaginitis? A retrospective descriptive study conducted by an OB –GYN infectious diseases specialty clinic on Asian women
Biography:
Dr. Judith Perez Peralta completed her medical school at the UERMMMC, Philippines and went on to become a board-certified OB GYN. After completing her clinical fellowship in Infectious Diseases for Obstetrics and Gynecology, she became a research fellow of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School / Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dept. of Epidemiology c/o Dept. of Obstetrics & Gynecology in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a probiotics advocate and is actively involved in research to promote probiotics in women’s health.
Abstract:
A retrospective, descriptive study of women with persistent vaginal discharge referred to an infectious disease specialty clinic.
Objectives: (1) To describe the sociodemographic factors of women with recurrent/ persistent vaginal discharge seen in an infectious disease specialty clinic (2) To describe the clinical outcomes of women with persistent/recurrent vaginal discharge following outpatient treatment (3) To compare the outcomes by type of vaginal infection and treatment with antimicrobials and probiotics.
Background: Persistent/recurrent vaginal discharge is a common problem among women and most cases are managed with empiric treatment for bacterial vaginosis, and not referred to infectious diseases specialists until several treatment failures. Furthermore, there are few available descriptive studies regarding outcomes following specific therapy with antimicrobials and adjunctive therapy with probiotics among Asian women seen in infectious disease specialty facilities.
Methods and Measures: De-identified data from out-patient medical records of women seen from 2015 to 2019 were retrieved from a private infectious disease out- patient facility in an urban tertiary hospital in the Philippines. Subjects were classified by type of vaginal infection based on clinical presentation, diagnostic tests, and type of appropriate treatment, such as antimicrobials and probiotics. Data on treatment response and number of treatment visits were also collected.
Results: Descriptive and inferential statistics will be calculated for all data to determine the frequency distribution of the different types of recurrent vaginitis in the patient population, response to treatment and number of treatment visits. Sociodemographic data will be analyzed to determine the average age of the patients and other associated risk factors.
Hypothesis: This study will demonstrate that women with diverse types of recurrent vaginitis show clinical improvement after specific therapeutic intervention using the appropriate use of diagnostic tests and antimicrobials. This study will show the increasing role of probiotics in the armamentarium against vaginal infections.
Conclusions: The results of this study will be available by the time of the conference.
- Probiotics and nutrition
Location: Park Inn By Radisson Toronto Airport West, Canada
Chair
Judith Perez Peralta
St. Luke’s Medical Center, Philippines
Co-Chair
Ms. Clara Desvignes
Voisin Consulting Life Sciences, France
Session Introduction
Andrea Roncolini
Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy
Title: Edible insects in acquaculture: Microbial dynamics in the expolitation of Hermetia illucens as fish meal replacement
Biography:
Andrea Roncolini Doctoral candidate at D3A-UNIVPM. His doctoral project concerns the investigation about microbiological aspects of edible insect as food and feed. Through culture-dependent (microbial cultivation, isolation and enumeration) and independent methods (molecular biology methods) he studies edible insects microbiota characterization, occurrence of transferable resistance genes in edible insects and exploitation of insect powder in bread making. He is also involved in other projects concerning the exploitation of lactic acid bacteria (isolation, characterization and development of starters) for the production of fermented foods, the microbiological food safety analysis, the use of biotracers for environmental assays. He had a Master’s degree in Agricultural and Environmental Biotechnology at University of Perugia and his Thesis concerned the taxonomic and ecologic characterization of yeasts isolated from Alpine soils. He had a Professional Master’s Programme with merit-based scholarship in “Characterization and technologies for the remediation of polluted sites” at University of Rome “La Sapienza”.
Abstract:
In 2015, EFSA listed a few insect species for their potential as food and feed in the European Union (EFSA Scientific Committee, 2015). Between those species Hermetia illucens (black soldier fly) represents a potential feed for animal rearing, due to its ability in efficiently converting organic wastes into biomass – rich in high-quality protein and fat (Diener et al., 2011; van Huis et al., 2013). Indeed in this study, Danio rerio, a fish species considered as a model for the study of vertebrate development, was fed with three different diets: (i) H. illucens reared on waste obtained from roasting coffee process; (ii) H. illucens reared on insects commercial growth substrate; (iii) a typical fish meal as control diet (Wixon, 2000).
In this context, in order to satisfy EFSA request (ANSES Opinion, 2015), the aim of the present study was to investigate the microbial dynamics along the entire D. rerio rearing chain using H. illucens as fish meal replacement. In more detail, typical fish meal, H. illucens and its growth substrates and frasses were subjected to microbial viable counts for the enumeration of total mesophilic areobes, spore forming bacteria, lactic acid bacteria, Enterobacteriaceae and eumycetes. Moreover the microbiota of the already cited samples and D. rerio gut samples reared with the three different diets was studied by PCR DGGE and metagenomic sequencing.
Among the different insect rearing chains microbial enumeration showed several distinct trends depending on rearing chain or analyzed microbes. Furthermore, PCR DGGE and metagenomic sequencing results highlighted a high biodiversity in the analyzed samples.
Riccardo Sabbatini,
Marche Polytechnic University
Title: The potential role of essential oils as preservatives against spoilage yeasts in yogurt
Biography:
I’m a PhD student at the department of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at Polytechnic University of Marche. I have a Master’s degree in Applied Biology at Marche Polytechnic University. My Master’s Degree Thesis concerned the evaluation of the fermentative attitudes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains to produce craft beers. My doctoral project is in food microbiology and it’s based on the study of methods for the study of pro-technological and spoilage yeasts in food industry.
Abstract:
Contamination of foods by spoilage yeasts could lead to a reduced food product shelf-life due to gas production and undesirable off-flavors and off-odours. Considering the growing consumer’s demand for natural foods without chemical preservatives, the food industry has been induced to research alternative solutions to guarantee the required microbiological standards. A plant-derived natural antimicrobials such as essential oils have emerged as effective compounds against spoilage microorganisms and/or pathogens which could affect food safety and stability.
In this context, the aim of this study was to assess the potential role of 7 different essential oils (cinnamon, ginger, lemongrass, mandarin, orange, lemon and lime) as preservatives in yogurt against spoilage yeasts. These essential oils were chosen for their possible positive attribution to yogurt’s flavour and odour. The antifungal activity of these essential oils was evaluated by disc diffusion assay on 75 spoilage yeast strains isolated from yogurts prepared with buffalo milk. The tested yeasts belonged to the genera Candida, Rhodotorula, Debaryomyces, Kluyveromyces and Yarrowia. The best performing essential oils were cinnamon and lemongrass. Therefore, they were selected for further minimum inhibition concentration (MIC) assay using the micro-well dilution method. Based on the obtained results, the potential role of the selected essential oils as preservatives was tested directly in yogurts intentionally contaminated by selected yeast strains in order to confirm their efficiency against yeast spoilage and to evaluate their sensory impact on the final product through a final acceptance test.
Hanan Shehata
University of Guelph, Canada
Title: Enumeration of probiotic strain Lactobacillus casei Lc-11 using viability real time PCR
Biography:
Hanan Shehata has completed her PhD at the University of Guelph. Hanan is currently an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at the Natural Health Product (NHP) Research Alliance, University of Guelph
Abstract:
Probiotic production and consumption have been rapidly increasing due to their potential health benefits. Probiotics are “live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host”. Health benefits of probiotics are strain-specific and are dose-dependent. Hence, it is essential to include the correct strain names and the viable cell count throughout the shelf life on probiotic product labels. A tool is needed for quick and accurate identification and enumeration of viable cells in probiotic products. PCR based methods are the most commonly used methods for food diagnostics because they are quick and sensitive. Viability PCR is a technique that uses intercalating dyes to intercalate to DNA of membrane-damaged cells so this DNA cannot amplify in a PCR reaction. In this study, viability PCR was used for the enumeration of probiotic strain Lactobacillus casei Lc-11 using strain-specific primers. The effectiveness of PMAxx was proven by its ability to differentiate between viable and heat-killed cells. The linear dynamic range was established between 3.7*105 to 37 genomes. The LOD was determined to be equivalent to 37 genomes (corresponding to 18.7 CFU). The reaction efficiency averaged to 101%. R square values were >0.99. The RSD% for repeatability and reproducibility averaged to 0.4% and 1.9%, respectively. Bacterial counts of Lc-11 products were determined using viability PCR and compared to the standard plate count method. The counts from both methods were highly correlated with R square >0.99. This protocol enables accurate and fast probiotic enumeration.
Jose Luis Martinez
Université Laval, Canada
Title: Epistemology of a new era of healthy foods and the construction of social myths
Biography:
Jose Luis Martinez is an architect of scientific thought, stimulated by the epistemological has developed his career in the biological sciences. Engineer, master of science and candidate for a doctorate in food science, traveled around the world to learn about how people live and eat, and to learn about traditional aspects of food, intensifying these experiences to their scientific knowledge. Currently, he has focused his studies on understanding the results and paradigms in research on the microbiome.
Abstract:
The epistemology of food is my proposal to elucidate the forms of creation of scientific and non-scientific knowledge about the food phenomenon. From the rhetorics emanating from scientific discourses and in their dissemination, it is worth analyzing the construction of myths, paradigms and popular distortions in the daily life of the individual. New paradigms, scientific discoveries, are often disseminated in a deterministic manner, reducing the knowledge. These disclosures sometimes commercial, generate a complexity of reactions in society concerning the scientific task. Foods with probiotics, prebiotics, and synbiotics are part of those scientific innovations that their health functions are often diverted into myths because of adequate information. Commercial food claims are legislated. However, the social construction of science is also an identity crisis in modern societies. Then, from the food option of the individual, how identities are constructed and this identity is also associated with manifestations of the state of health. However, an individual has access to food-related to certain socio-economic conditions and cultural conditions specific to their geopolitical origin. Nowadays, talking about food is linked to thinking about health, nutrition, economy, environment, but it is also necessary to talk about the right to food. This raises, approximately, sustainable public policies to guarantee the right to "eat healthily" and "culturally appropriate".