Mitigation of Environmental Impact of Intensive Animal Farming through Conversion of Animal Wastes to Value-Added Products

The environmental impact of concentrated animal farming operations has become serious social issues, with the livestock wastes contaminating waterways and groundwaters and generating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that are responsible for more than half the total GHG emissions in agricultural activities in the U.S. These impacts are mostly due to the current practice of spraying manure or manure digestate on croplands. We have recently developed two novel processes not only to mitigate the impacts stemming from the current manure management practice but also to bring in extra revenues to livestock farmers, which should provide an incentive to the farmers, by recovering value-added products from livestock manure or manure digestate. In this review, we discuss the effectiveness of the processes to produce two products: protein hydrolysate feed additives from the manure-digestate solid by one process and renewable ammonia from the manure-digestate liquid by another. One process uses thermal hydrolysis to extract protein from manure-digestate solid at a moderate recovery rate of more than 60%. Another employs acid-base reactions to strip NH3 from manure-digestate liquid and dissolve the stripped NH3 gas into the water at a high recovery rate of 90%. By repeating this stripping process, the nitrogen concentration in the water can reach as high as 18%

IgA 腎症における腎生検後 5 年間の治療反応性と腎予後の関連性

Background: Immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN) is the most common type of primary glomerulonephritis. Since most patients have a relatively benign renal prognosis, long-term follow-up is required. During such a long course of disease, relapse of IgAN is occasionally observed after upper respiratory tract infection or without any trigger. However, little is known about the impact of relapse on long-term renal outcomes. Methods: In this retrospective cohort study of biopsy-proven primary IgAN, we analyzed the association of 5-year therapeutic responsiveness (relapse) with the subsequent development of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) using a 5-year landmark analysis (Cox model) and explored predictors of relapse from histological and clinical data at baseline. Results: Among 563 patients from the exploratory cohort, most relapses (13.7%) occurred within 5 years after treatment. Using 5-year landmark analysis, among 470 patients, 79 developed ESKD during a median follow-up period of 155 months. Even after adjustment for clinicopathological relevant confounders, hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) in the relapse and non-responder groups compared with the remission group were 2.86 (1.41-5.79) and 2.74 (1.48-5.11), respectively. Among 250 patients who achieved remission within 5 years, proteinuria, eGFR, mesangial hypercellularity, endocapillary hypercellularity, segmental sclerosis, and crescent, but not interstitial fibrosis/tubular atrophy, were independent predictors of 5-year relapse in multivariable logistic regression analysis, CONCLUSIONS: Both relapsers and non-responders had similarly strong association with ESKD in patients with IgAN. We also confirmed the predictors of relapse 5 years after renal biopsy, which may guide the treatment strategies for patients with IgAN who occasionally relapse after remission.博士（医学）・乙第1530号・令和5年3月15

Th17 cells differentiated with mycelial membranes of Candida albicans prevent oral candidiasis

Candida albicans is a human commensal that causes opportunistic infections. Th17 cells provide resistance against mucosal infection with C. albicans; however, the T cell antigens remain little known. Our final goal is to find effective T cell antigens of C. albicans that are responsible for immunotherapy against candidiasis. Here, we prepared fractions including cytosol, membrane and cell wall from yeast and mycelial cells. Proteins derived from a membrane fraction of mycelial cells effectively induced differentiation of CD4+ T cells into IL-17A-producing Th17 cells. To confirm the immunological response in vivo of proteins from mycelial membrane, we performed adoptive transfer experiments using ex vivo stimulated CD4+ T cells from IL-17A-GFP reporter mice. Mycelial membrane-differentiated CD4+ Th17 cells adoptively transferred intravenously prevented oral candidiasis by oral infection of C. albicans, compared with control anti-CD3-stimulated CD4+ T cells. This was confirmed by the clinical score and the number of neutrophils on the infected tissues. These data suggest that effective T cell antigens against candidiasis could be present in the membrane protein fraction of mycelial cells. The design of novel vaccination strategies against candidiasis will be our next step.福岡歯科大学2017年

Identification of a Novel Alternatively Spliced Form of Inflammatory Regulator SWAP-70-Like Adapter of T Cells

福岡歯科大学2016年

Mild Heat Stress Affects on the Cell Wall Structure in Candida albicans Biofilm

福岡歯科大学2018年

Bacterial-induced maternal interleukin-17A pathway promotes autistic-like behaviors in mouse offspring

福岡歯科大学2019年