Mr Onaka explained his association with Prof Noboru Fujii (late) of faculty of Agriculture, Miyazaki University that started in the year 1989, and about the work of Dr. Fuji who first isolated the black yeast and successfully cultured them in a reproducible manner from which the Nichi Glow is now produced. Since Mr Onaka was technically from water purification background, this black yeast cleared dirty water into better one which they thought may help people endure healthy condition, but they didn’t imagine or foresee these benefits with gut microbiome or neurological conditions. He was amazed by the passion of Prof Fujii in science, especially on his inquisitiveness about the poly-extremo tolerant nature of the specific strains of Aureobasidium Pullulans. He added that the involvement of Dr Fujii in scientific pursuits found a good match with his technicality and industrial scale up from lab to GMP production, leading to what we are today.
Now, after almost 35 years, he is glad to have played a modest contributing role to this feat, as this outcome motivates his team further to evaluate numerous novel strains in their library in Kochi, Japan, which they would keep exploring in association with a global team of scientists and clinicians.

Jesuit Missionaries’ contribution to India, especially to the South was Education and Medicine – The first university college in India to be established is the St Joseph’s College in Trichy (founded in 1844). Jesuits global stand since 1960s has been improving the poor and the marginalized. Key to empowering them is Education.
Philosophy of Jesuits Mission is Educate – Enlighten/Employ and then Empower. There are mover 200 universities and thousands of Higher Seconday Schools run by the Jesuits. Some Jesuit institutions, such as Canisius College and John Carrol University (in USA) are conducting research on Autism. Jesuit universities such as St Joseph’s University in Philadelphia is one of the 30 best universities for students on the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and another Jesuit institution, University of San Francisco has made a breakthrough in autism in predicting ASD from the age of 3 months. Now in Madurai, through international collaboration, JAICARE is focusing on the medically marginalized, will undertake the mission of i. Acquiring knowledge; ii. Sharing research expertise; iii. Skill development; and iv. Extending help to the needy who cannot otherwise afford medical facilities – So, the watchword is Research and Reach out. Jesuits' focus, so far having been socially and economically marginalized and discriminated people: socially discarded, economically broken, and politically exploited people – to bring up the people at the bottom of social pyramid to the pinnacle of social pyramid as leaders, now a new dimension has evolved, focus on medically disadvantaged children – thanks to medical experts from India and abroad and the administration of DACA in Madurai for extending help to the autism children. The future plan is Rehabilitation and pre-emptive methods for the affected children. At the same time awareness and psychological help to cope with situation for the parents.

Prof. Rao lauded the efforts of the inter-disciplinary work between the Indian team led by Dr. Raghavan and the Japanese team. He said that KL university is planning to academically and scientifically collaborate with JAICARE. He recalled the discussions with NCRM on the application of these beta glucans for bringing down the inflammatory response in COVID-19 published in peer reviewed journals (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2021.112243) and once again appreciated the work of JAICARE in Autism.

As a psychiatrist, he commented that the results of the study are very encouraging and based on his experience he considers this is something worthy to plan larger studies with longer follow-up as a global multi-centric study, especially he commented on the results in gut microbiota which at this are under peer review.
He also adviced to start collaborating with like-minded institutes globally to learn from each other; Todays panel having experts from Japan, USA, Mauritius and Srilanka, is a good start, so building such networking to gain a mutually beneficial association for the sake of these children, whose quality of life even if improves in terms a few parameters like sleep, that will be great relief to the parents, specially the mother, whose sleep quality will improve, he added. .

The MJF Charitable Foundation is the charitable arm of the world famous Dilmah Tea. The vision of its founder Mr. Merrill J. Fernando is “Business is a matter of human service”. The foundation represents an alternative economic model, it transcends charity and corporate social responsibility, one that is a genuinely sustainable and fair way of doing business. The foundation has supported over 100,000 beneficiaries.
The foundation has been providing daily education and therapy services for over 450 students with developmental disorders across four centres in Sri Lanka and the National Centre for Children with Cerebral Palsy and other Developmental Disorders (NCCCPDD) was started in 2016. On the 6th October 2020, we launched the disABILITY Screening App/online platform as a post COVID response to provide tele-screening & therapy services to children with developmental disabilities in Sri Lanka. There are more than 250 families who are receiving the teletherapy services through this platform and many of them are from remote areas where they have limited access to therapy services.
As a parent of a child with CP and a specialist in rehabilitation, he was very excited and thrilled to know about the outcome of this study, particularly that this food supplement can help balance the gut microbiome. He added that this has a lot of potential for further research and studies on many neurodevelopmental disabilities, as the human gut microbiome is a huge microbial community that plays an irreplaceable role in human life and many studies has shown that balanced gut microbiome can be helpful in modulating neurological conditions.
He commented that this gives a lot of hope to families of these children and the clinicians working with them and appreciated the Indo-Japan Collaborative team for their work and efforts.

Welcome Dr Ashwamed and we thank you for joining; As a clinician and as a director of health services, handling public health of govt of Mauritius, where I understand that there are around 10000 children with Autism, I have two questions to; the first one is: can you please tell us about the govt policies or provisions to take care of children with disabilities, especially with Autism; second question is since you have had your medical education in India and now practicing in Mauritius for almost 30 years, your opinion on the study outcome and any advice to our research and also JAICARE we would appreciate

Being a public health services director of Mauritius where there are approximately 10000~12000 children with ASD, this is a very interesting topic for us and the mothers wouldn’t know if their child is autistic when born. So the light shown by the study will be of great help for the children and their families for an early intervention. In Mauritius, social security, health and education are three departments which take care of the children with autism and there is a special school for children with autism and there are centres which offer all rehabilitative therapies.
As Dr Ashwamed had his education in India, he understands both worlds and this study is simply a breakthrough and would be curious to check if there could be benefits to children in Mauritius. Since the food habits between India and Mauritius are different, he would be interested in the gut microbiome study in a similar manner in Mauritius.

“Now that we have been able to report in this pilot study that in children with ASD, their plasma Alpha-Synuclein levels increased which correlated with objective improvements; However the mechanisms we hypothesize is that the beta glucans enhancing NK cells activity which might have cleared the deposited Alpha-synuclein in the enteric nervous system which have come out circulating, leading to their levels increasing in the plasma; May I ask you on your thoughts and suggestions for further research how to explore this to add more clarity”

He is being one of the associates to have developed alpha-synuclein inducible cell lines SHSY-5Y, added to the comment of Dr. Raghavan that a mere protein increase may not be protective and insisted that we need to find if the protein is protective or pathogenic. He explained how things are happening in several institutes in an isolated manner, like basic work on alpha synuclein was associated with Autism and pointed to the significance of the present work that it connects the dots and more importantly has yielded a beneficial clinical outcome. The stress associated phenomenon which gives rise to these curli proteins and amyloids and the genomic instability, all these need further research on whether the natural compound beta glucan has been of help in autism by working on the stress, DNA repair and the other multiple pathways.

The AFO-202 in their study proves it as an excellent prebiotic that apart from enhancing the NK cells which he guess has helped clear the alpha-synuclein deposits in the enteric nervous system, He shared his thoughts on the potentials of this novel beta glucans directly or indirectly to act in the brain through microglia which has to be evaluated in appropriate models. They are starting research on SH-SY5Y Neuroblastoma cell lines which is at the initial stage, but he also proposes to study in Astrocytoma cell line. Importantly evaluating whether the alpha-synuclein produced by these cell lines under various conditions are misfolded or normal, if so we need to check whether there is any difference in their proportion, that he thinks will hold the key to unlock several fundamental mechanisms causing cellular stress and method of relieving them.