Drug – bio-affecting and body treating compositions – Extract – body fluid – or cellular material of undetermined... – Separated animal oil or solidified form thereof derived from...
Reexamination Certificate
2000-04-24
2002-02-12
Lankford, Jr., Leon B. (Department: 1651)
Drug, bio-affecting and body treating compositions
Extract, body fluid, or cellular material of undetermined...
Separated animal oil or solidified form thereof derived from...
C424S547000, C435S212000, C435S219000, C435S267000, C435S268000, C435S272000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06346276
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a process for separating the water-insoluble (oil-soluble) useful substances economically from the wastes of fishes and shellfishes. More particularly, it relates to the said process featuring the steps of preparing a novel oil-in-water type emulsified composition from the wastes of fishes and shellfishes by treating the wastes with proteolytic enzymes to convert proteins in the wastes into oligoproteins having a molecular weight in a specified range, separating said composition into solid and liquid, and extracting the solid matter with an organic solvent.
BACKGROUND ART
It is needless to say that fishes and shellfishes are natural resources which are of vital importance as a nutrient for mankind. These fishes and shellfishes are processed in a variety of forms, and in the course of processing, their skins, guts, bones, etc., are discarded as industrial waste. Although part of such waste is utilized as fertilizer or stock feed, most of it, under the present situation, is left unrecycled and necessitates disposal at a great cost. The regulations on the method of disposal have become more rigorous recently, and the treatment of such waste is posing a serious problem from the aspect of environmental protection.
For instance, cuttlefish skin, which is discarded as industrial waste after hot-water processing, is estimated to produce at least 2,000 tons of waste per year in Japan. Recycling of such cuttlefish skin waste will be a great benefit to the prevention of environmental pollution in the sense of effective utilization of industrial waste. Also, by promoting recycling of waste matter which is presently disposed at a great expense, it will become possible to recover useful substances at a notably low cost.
It is known that these fish and shellfish wastes (skin, guts, bone, head, tail, fin, eyes of scallops, shell, and sometimes whole fish or shellfish body) contain various useful substances in large quantities or in low or only slight concentrations.
For instance, as water-soluble substances, various types of water-s,oluble vitamins, various types of minerals, polysaccharides, amino-acids, chondroitin sulfuric acid, enzymes, protamine, triglycerides of saturated or unsaturated lower fatty acids, etc., are known to exist in said wastes, and as water-insoluble substances, calcium, triglycerides of saturated higher fatty acids, triglycerides of unsaturated fatty acids (monoenoic acids such as myristoleic acid, palmitoleic acid and nervonic acid, tetraenoic acids such as arachidonic acid, pentaenoic acids such as clupanodonic acid, hexaenoic acids such as docosahexaenoic acid, etc.), phospholipids such as phosphaditidyl choline and phsphaditidyl ethanolamine, etc., are known to be contained in said waste.
These substances can be applied to a wide scope of uses, such as nutrition promoting foods, humectants, liquid crystal material, medicinal base material, antibacterial agents, preservatives, stock feed, etc., according to the particular properties of the substances.
Extraction from the natural products may be the best way for obtaining an desired compound with ease and at low cost if the selection of raw material is appropriate and an effective means for extraction is elaborated.
For example, an extensive search has been made for the materials containing docosahexaenoic acid (hereinafter abbreviated as DHA) in high concentrations, and the methods for preparing DHA from the head, guts or whole of the blue-back fishes such as tuna, bonito, saurel, macherel, sardine, etc., have been proposed (JP-A-63-164852 and JP-A-64-50890).
However, in view of the difficulty of the separating operations, attempts for yielding the objective useful substances are also being made using the artificial or natural materials other than fishes and shellfishes by introducing such techniques as synthetic reactions or enzymatic reactions for certain types of substances.
For instance, it has been reported that the glyceride esters of highly unsaturated fatty acids were synthesized by acyl group exchange between the fatty acids with a lipase (Journal of Fermentation and Bioengineering, Vol. 69, pp. 23-25, 1990).
Also, the techniques for obtaining a desired phospholipid derivative by enzymatic ester exchange or acylation from phospholipid or lysophospholipid and an optional fatty acid or fatty acid ester have been disclosed (JP-A-63-105686, JP-A-63-185391, JP-A-2-35093 and JP-A-5-236974). However, all of the above-mentioned reports or patents involve many problems, such as random entry of the introduced fatty acid into the sn-1 or sn-2 position and too low enzyme reaction rate, for realizing practical industrial application. Thus, a technique enabling extraction of a desired useful substance from selected waste containing such a substance in a higher concentration by a simple process has been desired.
A method featuring extraction of the desired substance from a microorganism cultured in a DHA-added medium has been also disclosed (JP-A-5-123176). Further, a method of preparing DHA from the guts of cuttlefish (JP-A-2-8298) and a method of preparing DHA from cuttlefish skin (JP-A-6-321970 and JP-A-9-77782), worked up in view of high DHA concentration in phospholipid of cuttlefish, have been reported.
In order to separate the useful substances from the fish body, generally the fish body is first divided into the water-soluble components and the water-insoluble components.
Usually steaming is employed for this treatment. When steam is passed through waste of fishes or shellfishes, oil is separated out. In this case, however, the interface between water and oil is ambiguous and it is hard to distinguish between the two phases, so that no perfect separation can be achieved and, in some cases, the whole sets to gel, making it impossible to carry out the separating operation.
Also, according to the above method, since steam heating is applied, the useful components which are unstable to heat may be denatured and loose their activity. Generally, the fish body components are prone to oxidize by the action of oxygen in the air to generate the so-called fish-smelling components (amines, aldehydes, etc.). Needless to say, the presence of such fish-smelling components greatly reduces the commercial value of the product. Lots of labor and cost (for high-degree vacuum distillation, etc.) are required for removing the fish smell. The similar problems are also raised in connection with the tinted matter with heating.
In order to remove water which accounts for about 90% of the overall fish body weight, it is practiced to dry the fish body by various methods such as lyophilization, spray drying, sun-drying, etc., and extract the useful substance from the dried product with a solvent (hexane, alcohol, etc.). This method, however, requires specific equipment such as a dryer, which leads to high production cost. And when heating is needed, there arises the problem of the denaturing of the useful components as mentioned above. Further, there may be situations where it is required to transport the material-to-be-processed with high water content to a treating plant which may not necessarily be located adjacent to the waste generating plant. Moreover, in case a refrigerator van or such is used for the transport, it is necessary to take sufficient measure to prevent putrefaction (if putrefaction begins, the commercial value of the material will be spoiled by the fish smell as mentioned above), and also the transportation cost will become a burden. Therefore, a drying treatment for removing water is usually conducted before extraction of the desired substance.
As means for removing water from a living specimen, various methods such as compression, air drying, heat drying, vacuum drying and freeze-drying are conceivable. For reducing water without changing the normal figure of the living specimen, compression alone is insufficient to attain a desired water removal rate while air drying, heat drying and vacuum drying involve the problem in respects of treating temperature and treating time
Fukuhara Haruo
Nagasaki Hitoshi
Tanouchi Masatoshi
Tsuchiya Satoshi
Asahi Kasei Kabushiki Kaisha
Coe Susan D.
Lankford , Jr. Leon B.
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