On a summer day in 2013, Leila Strickland she watched raptly Mark Post unveil the first lab-grown hamburger: thousands of tissue culture plates filled with bovine stem cells, mixed with fetal calf serum and other nutrients, which differentiate into muscle cells.
Exciting, no doubt, but Leila Strickland's (Biomilq) mind was already wandering to another potential application of cell culture: human breast milk. Like many of her mothers, Strickland had hoped to breastfeed both of her children for the first six months after they were born.
The medical establishment considers breastfeeding the gold standard of infant nutrition. Breast milk appears to reduce the likelihood of digestive problems, skin rashes, and (most importantly) necrotizing enterocolitis, a rare but potentially fatal intestinal disease in premature infants.
How the idea was born
Like many mothers, Leila Strickland had found breastfeeding difficult. Her first child, born three years before her, had struggled to latch on to her nipple. She was now experiencing similar problems with her little daughter. That's how Leila Strickland started thinking about how she could grow not artificial meat but cells that produce breast milk. A pregnant woman could have had a breast biopsy during her pregnancy, and she could have grown cells and produced milk before the baby was even born.
A few days later, she and her husband pooled $5.000 in savings and purchased a huge biological hood, a microscope, an incubator and a centrifuge. For years she fought to keep the project alive, and was on the verge of giving up. But in May 2020, Biomilq, the company he founded, raised $ 3,5 million from a group of investors led by Bill Gates.
Biomilq is now competing with competitors from Singapore and New York to shake up the world of infant nutrition in a way never seen before.
Breast milk, why is it so important
Breastfeeding has been in and out of fashion since ancient times. Entrusting breastfeeding to someone other than the mother dates back to at least ancient Greece. In 1851, the first modern bottle was invented, pushing breastfeeding to near extinction. Shortly thereafter, German chemist Justus von Liebig invented the first commercial infant formula: cow's milk, wheat, malt flour and a pinch of potassium bicarbonate. It was soon considered the ideal food for infants, and goodbye breast milk.
By the 20th century, the use of infant formula had skyrocketed, driven by a sea of advertising. At the same time, more and more women were joining the workforce, making breastfeeding more complicated. The perception that formula was as safe and efficient, if not more so, precipitated breastfeeding. In the 70s the historic low. Today it's skyrocketing again, and doctors agree: breast milk promotes the best nutrition for newborns. However, many are breastfed only in the first few months, then the percentage drops.
The turning point of Biomilq
The first step Leila Strickland took to create breast milk in the lab was anything but glamorous. She couldn't afford to purchase human breast cell lines, which can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. That's why she decided to start with cow cells. She got a piece of udder from an (already slaughtered) cow and she started working on it.
Breast milk derives from two types of cells in the milk ducts and alveoli: small sacs in the mammary gland where milk collects. Luminal epithelial cells absorb nutrients from the bloodstream and convert them into milk. Next to them, which line the ducts and alveoli, are smooth, muscle-like myoepithelial cells. When a baby begins to suckle, it pushes the myoepithelial cells to contract, pushing milk from the luminal cells, through the ducts, to the baby's mouth.
For three years, Strickland took her laptop into her tiny rented lab space to perform experiments with her cow udder cells. In 2016 he ran out of money and had to put the business on hold. But she never abandoned the idea.
Three years later, however, in 2019, with the birth of new companies to produce food in the laboratory, Leila Strickland was convinced to start again, and founded a startup: Biomilq. this time the topic was hot, and it found some funding. A leap in quality was missing now, because this little money would run out soon.
Biomilq was on the brink of closure when a group of investors led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, founded by Bill Gates to support technologies that reduce carbon emissions, changed everything. In the spring of 2020, 3 and a half million dollars arrived in the startup's accounts, and now the challenge is on.
The race for breast milk born in the laboratory
As mentioned, Biomilq is not the only company aiming to create a new type of artificial breast milk. With a similar approach, Turtle Tree Labs in Singapore hopes to eventually “replace all the milk currently on the market,” according to co-founder Max Rye. It hopes to launch its products on the market in 2021.
Meantime Helena, based in New York, will emulate breast milk through fermentation. Laura Katz, the founder, plans to use microbes to synthesize the constituent compounds of milk (proteins, carbohydrates and fats) and recombine them into a nutritious liquid. Since similar processes have already gained approval from the US FDA for products such as Impossible Burgers, made with fermented soy protein, hopes to face fewer regulatory hurdles than its competitors.
What happens now?
None of these feats will be easy, because relatively little is known about breast milk. Most human breast epithelial cell studies tend to focus on their role in breast cancer rather than milk production.
And milk itself, is a rich and stunning element made from thousands of chemicals. We know nutritionally the proteins, carbohydrates and fat they contain. We know some particular bioactive molecules present, such as oligosaccharides (complex sugars that feed healthy bacteria in the baby's intestine), IgA (the main antibody present in breast milk) and other things universally recognized as good. But breast milk also contains short strands of RNA, the presence of which was only discovered in 2010 and whose role in the baby's development is still not well understood.
For this reason, Biomilq plans to use mass spectrometry, a technique that measures the mass of different molecules within a sample, to study how the proteins, oligosaccharides and fats contained in their product behave compared to the constituents of released breast milk from one breast.
But the most important challenge is another: how to standardize a substance that is unique to each mother.
The composition of breast milk changes as the baby grows. In the first few days after giving birth, mothers produce colostrum, a thick, yellow, concentrated milk rich in compounds such as the IgA antibody and lactoferrin, an abundant protein that boosts the baby's immunity. Soon, colostrum is replaced by “transitional milk,” thinner but with more fat and lactose. After about two weeks, breast milk is considered "mature." But even then, it can change the composition over the course of a single feeding. Hindmilk, or the last milk remaining in a breast, has a higher fat content than previously produced milk, which is why women are often advised to empty one breast before moving on to the other.
While Biomilq admit they cannot replicate this complexity, nor all the antibodies and microbes in breast milk, they say their product will be more personalized than those of their competitors. They plan to work with pregnant women, taking samples of their breast epithelial cells and growing them to create personalized milk to use when their babies arrive. Next, they hope to create a cheaper generic option using donor cells. Both, Egger insists, will be better than powdered milk.
Breast milk in the laboratory: where are we now?
Strickland and Egger have already produced a liquid containing both lactose and casein, the main proteins and sugary compounds found in breast milk. They are now testing it to see if they can detect other components, such as oligosaccharides and lipids. They are currently trying to figure out which combination brings them closest to the composition of natural breast milk. They estimate it will take about two years to find a good enough match.
