Hesham A. El Enshasy

Mushroom immunomodulators: unique molecules with unlimited applications

For centuries, mushrooms have been used as food and medicine in different cultures. More recently, many bioactive compounds have been isolated from different types of mushrooms. Among these, immunomodulators have gained much interest based on the increasing growth of the immunotherapy sector. Mushroom immunomodulators are classified under four categories based on their chemical nature as: lectins, terpenoids, proteins, and polysaccharides. These compounds are produced naturally in mushrooms cultivated in greenhouses. For effective industrial production, cultivation is carried out in submerged culture to increase the bioactive compound yield, decrease the production time, and reduce the cost of downstream processing. This review provides a comprehensive overview on mushroom immunomodulators in terms of chemistry, industrial production, and applications in medical and nonmedical sectors.

Mushrooms: A Potential Natural Source of Anti-Inflammatory Compounds for Medical Applications

For centuries, macrofungi have been used as food and medicine in different parts of the world. This is mainly attributed to their nutritional value as a potential source of carbohydrates, proteins, amino acids, and minerals. In addition, they also include many bioactive metabolites which make mushrooms and truffles common components in folk medicine, especially in Africa, the Middle East, China, and Japan. The reported medicinal effects of mushrooms include anti-inflammatory effects, with anti-inflammatory compounds of mushrooms comprising a highly diversified group in terms of their chemical structure. They include polysaccharides, terpenoids, phenolic compounds, and many other low molecular weight molecules. The aims of this review are to report the different types of bioactive metabolites and their relevant producers, as well as the different mechanisms of action of mushroom compounds as potent anti-inflammatory agents.

Scaling up, characterization of levan and its inhibitory role in carcinogenesis initiation stage'.

Honey isolate Bacillus subtilis M was cultivated in shake flasks and in 16-l bioreactor cultures to investigate cell growth, bio-metabolites production kinetics and bioprocess scalability. The respective maximal levan and levansucrase productions of 59.5 g/l and 74.1 U/ml were achieved in bioreactor cultures under pH controlled condition (pH=7.0) after only 24 h. Crude levan (levE) was isolated, characterized and fractionated into F1, F2, and F3 with different molecular weight (21.8, 13.118, 9.53 kDa). (1)H NMR and (13)C NMR spectroscopy proved that LevE and their fractions were mainly β-(2, 6)-linked levan-type polysaccharide. The cancer chemo-preventive activity indicated that the levE and its fraction 3 were promising inhibitors of cytochrome P-450 1A activity, inducers of glutathione-S-transferase activity in Murine hepatomaHepa1c1c7cells and possessed highest radical scavenging affinity to both ROO and OH. They inhibited the induced-DNA fragmentation. None of the tested samples triggered apoptosis or necrosis in splenocytes, except F2.

Mushrooms and Truffles: Historical Biofactories for Complementary Medicine in Africa and in the Middle East

The ethnopharmaceutical approach is important for the discovery and development of natural product research and requires a deep understanding not only of biometabolites discovery and profiling but also of cultural and social science. For millennia, epigeous macrofungi (mushrooms) and hypogeous macrofungi (truffles) were considered as precious food in many cultures based on their high nutritional value and characterized pleasant aroma. In African and Middle Eastern cultures, macrofungi have long history as high nutritional food and were widely applied in folk medicine. The purpose of this review is to summarize the available information related to the nutritional and medicinal value of African and Middle Eastern macrofungi and to highlight their application in complementary folk medicine in this part of the world.

Characterization of Extracellular Dextranase from a Novel Halophilic Bacillus subtilis NRC-B233b a Mutagenic Honey Isolate under Solid State Fermentation

Bacillus subtilis NRC-B233b was isolated from Libyan honey sample proved to be a potent dextranase producer by applying solid state fermentation and utilizing corn flour as the sole carbon source. The optimized culture conditions for dextranase productions were 37°C, pH 10, 32 h, and 20% (v/w) moisture content. A unique character of this isolate is its ability to produce steady dextranase irrespective to the presence of NaCl in the medium. The addition of 0.175 Mm CrCl3 increased the enzyme production by about 4.5 fold. Further improvement in enzyme production was achieved by simple UV mutation which increased the enzyme production up to about 2842 U/g. The crude extract has been partially purified about 112-fold from crude extract by only two purification steps involving ultra-filtration. The partially purified dextranase showed its maximum activity at pH 9.2 and 70°C. It retained full activity (100%) at 75°C for one hour. Dextranase activity increased about 4 fold in the presence of 10% NaCl. This enzyme showed variable degradation effect on different types of dextran and its derivatives. The treatment of viscous sugar cane juice with the enzyme preparation resulted in clear visual dextran hydrolysis. These results suggest that the dextranase produced by Bacillus subtilis NRC-B233b is industrially applicable.

Biotechnology for Wellness Industry: Concepts and Biofactories

One of the major issues in the 21st. century facing humankind is on how to stay healthy and delay the onset of chronic metabolic diseases. Chronic metabolic chronic diseases still afflict a substantial percentage of modern human population despite the advances in medical and health care technologies. They create a long-term financial burden to the nation as well as reducing the productivity and the quality of life. In the recent years, the wellness approach to healthy living by mean of health enhancement and disease prevention has been increasing in popularity. There is a tremendous global and local interest for wellness products. Wellness sector focuses on providing products and services to a wider community to improve appearance, slow down the effect of ageing and to reduce the risk of developing chronic metabolic diseases. The wellness products are intended for the promotion of health in soil, plants, animals and human. Soil health is the foundation of wellness as healthy and productive soil produce healthy plants and crops in turn produced healthy animals for human nutrition. It is a fact that human health is closely associated with the practice of healthy life style that include consuming wholesome nutrients, living in a non-toxic environment and enhancing physical and mental fitness. These factors in turn promote the attainment and maintenance of cellular homeostasis. Under cellular homeostasis the cellular metabolic activities are at their optimum. In this regard traditional and modern biotechnology offer comprehensive list of natural ingredients and metabolites essential for cellular metabolism. These natural ingredients and metabolites are derived from microbial, algal, plant, animals, and human sources. Most of these natural products are increasingly made available by using innovative bioprocess technologies as more of them are main components of functional foods, nutraceuticals, cosmeceuticals and therapeutics. Bioprocess industries are considered as source for both health and wealth. The new concept of bioprocess industries is based on using different types of cells as small micro-bio-factories. These small biofactories belong to different classes of living organisms ranging from the most primitive prokaryotic bacterial cells up to high eukaryotic human cells. In the present review, the concept of bioprocess design and cultivation of cells up to the industrial level will be presented.

Efficient production process for food grade acetic acid by acetobacter aceti in shake flask and in bioreactor cultures

Acetic acid is one of the important weak acids which had long history in chemical industries. This weak organic acid has been widely used as one of the key intermediate for many chemical, detergent, wood and food industries. The production of this acid is mainly carried out using submerged fermentation system and the standard strain Acetobacter aceti. In the present work, six different media were chosen from the literatures and tested for acetic acid production. The highest acetic acid production was produced in medium composed of glucose, yeast extract and peptone. The composition of this medium was optimized by changing the concentration of medium components. The optimized medium was composed of (g/L): glucose, 100; yeast extract, 12 and peptone 5 and yielded 53 g/L acetic acid in shake flask after 144 h fermentation. Further optimization in the production process was achieved by transferring the process to semi-industrial scale 16-L stirred tank bioreactor and cultivation under controlled pH condition. Under fully aerobic conditions, the production of acetic acid reached maximal concentration of about 76 g/L and 51 g/L for uncontrolled and controlled pH cultures, respectively.

Anaerobic Probiotics: The Key Microbes for Human Health

Human gastrointestinal microbiota (HGIM) incorporate a large number of microbes from different species. Anaerobic bacteria are the dominant organisms in this microbial consortium and play a crucial role in human health. In addition to their functional role as the main source of many essential metabolites for human health, they are considered as biotherapeutic agents in the regulation of different human metabolites. They are also important in the prevention and in the treatment of different physical and mental diseases. Bifidobacteria are the dominant anaerobic bacteria in HGIM and are widely used in the development of probiotic products for infants, children and adults. To develop bifidobacteria-based bioproducts, therefore, it is necessary to develop a large-scale biomass production platform based on a good understanding of the ideal medium and bioprocessing parameters for their growth and viability. In addition, high cell viability should be maintained during downstream processing and storage of probiotic cell powder or the final formulated product. In this work we review the latest information about the biology, therapeutic activities, cultivation and industrial production of bifidobacteria.

Production of α-amylase using new strain of Bacillus polymyxa isolated from sweet potato

In this study, a new amylase producer strain was isolated from sweet potato tuber. This strain was able to grow at 37 °C and produce α-amylase in high quantity compared to other standard strain cultures. In the first part, cultivation in shake flask in standard medium was carried out to give complete information about the growth and production kinetics of this strain. The results clearly demonstrate that the isolated strain is able to production α-amylase in submerged culture with concentration up to 2050 kat/L after 20 h cultivation. Furthermore, medium optimization was carried out by changing the starch concentration and cell cultivation in medium of mixed carbon source (composed of starch and glucose of ratio 15:5 g/g) to enhance the production process and to increase the growth rate. The volumetric and specific α-amylase production in this optimized medium were 4550 kat/L and 1060 kat/g, respectively. Further improvement in enzyme production process was achieved by scaling up the process from shake flask to 3-L stirred tank bioreactor under non-oxygen limiting condition. The maximal volumetric and specific α-amylase productions in bioreactor batch culture were 5210 kat/L and 1095kat/g, respectively, after only 14 h cultivation. Keywords - α-amylase, Bacillus polymyxus, bioprocess optimization, batch cultivation

Bioprocess development for kefiran production by Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens in semi industrial scale bioreactor

Lactobacillus kefiranofaciens is non-pathogenic gram positive bacteria isolated from kefir grains and able to produce extracellular exopolysaccharides named kefiran. This polysaccharide contains approximately equal amounts of glucose and galactose. Kefiran has wide applications in pharmaceutical industries. Therefore, an approach has been extensively studied to increase kefiran production for pharmaceutical application in industrial scale. The present work aims to maximize kefiran production through the optimization of medium composition and production in semi industrial scale bioreactor. The composition of the optimal medium for kefiran production contained sucrose, yeast extract and K2HPO4 at 20.0, 6.0, 0.25 g L−1, respectively. The optimized medium significantly increased both cell growth and kefiran production by about 170.56% and 58.02%, respectively, in comparison with the unoptimized medium. Furthermore, the kinetics of cell growth and kefiran production in batch culture of L. kefiranofaciens was investigated under un-controlled pH conditions in 16-L scale bioreactor. The maximal cell mass in bioreactor culture reached 2.76 g L−1 concomitant with kefiran production of 1.91 g L−1.