Startups are racing to reproduce breast milk in the lab
Things were hard at first for Biomilq, a startup working to create lab-grown breast milk. The team change caused them to lose their spot at IndieBio, and despite applying for several research grants, they failed to secure funding. As the company faced the possibility of running out of money, founder Michelle Egger started considering going back to her previous job, while co-founder Leila Strickland began looking for new opportunities.
However, just as Biomilq was on the verge of shuttering, they received a much-needed lifeline. A group of investors led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, established by Bill Gates to support technologies that reduce carbon emissions, pledged $3.5 million in funding. This injection of capital breathed fresh life into the company, as they believed disrupting the formula industry had potential to make a real impact. With the money arriving in the bank account in the summer of 2020, Biomilq was given a second chance.
Biomilq is not alone in this pursuit. TurtleTree Labs in Singapore is also working towards creating a new kind of baby formula. Co-founder Max Rye hopes to eventually replace all milk currently on the market. Their approach is similar to Biomilq’s, and they are currently developing fortifiers that can be added to formula to replicate the properties of breast milk. Unlike Biomilq, TurtleTree plans to collaborate with the formula industry and aims to bring their products to market in 2021.
Meanwhile, New York-based company Helaina plans to emulate breast milk through fermentation. Founder Laura Katz intends to synthesize the milk’s constituent compounds, such as proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, using microbes and then recombine them into a nutritionally-rich liquid. Katz hopes to face fewer regulatory hurdles, drawing from already approved processes used in products like Impossible Burgers made from fermented soy protein. She shares the same motivation as Strickland and Egger, believing that new parents deserve better options.
However, all these endeavors present scientific challenges, as breast milk remains largely unexplored. Limited knowledge exists about the mammary epithelial cells’ role in milk production, with studies primarily focusing on their connection to breast cancer. Breast milk itself is a complex mixture of thousands of chemicals, including proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and bioactive molecules like oligosaccharides and IgA.
Dr. Tarah Colaizy, the research director of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, explains this complexity further. Breast milk also contains short strands of RNA, discovered only in 2010, whose significance in infant development remains unclear. To study and compare the constituents of their lab-grown product to those of natural breast milk, Biomilq plans to utilize mass spectrometry, a technique that measures molecular mass.
An even larger challenge for these startups is standardization. Breast milk composition changes as a child grows, with colostrum being the first thick, yellow, and antibody-rich milk produced after birth. Transitional milk follows, with a higher fat and lactose content, eventually leading to mature milk. Even within a single feeding session, the milk’s composition can differ, with hindmilk having higher fat content than earlier milk.
The startups are working diligently to address these complexities while aiming to offer options for new parents who are unable to breastfeed. Despite the scientific obstacles ahead, the promise of lab-grown breast milk presents an innovative solution to an industry that has remained static for decades. The hope is that these efforts will lead to a new era of infant nutrition that delivers the benefits of breast milk while providing an alternative for those who need it.
