Lab-grown 'human milk' may be just three years away
Breast milk is the perfect food for babies but not all mothers are able to breastfeed, and with adoption or surrogacy, parents don't have the option.
CNN: Breast milk is the perfect food for babies but not all mothers are able to breastfeed, and with adoption or surrogacy, parents don't have the option.
Enter: BIOMILQ. The North Carolina-based startup is working to create "human milk" outside of the body.
The idea first came to co-founder and chief science officer Leila Strickland in 2013, after she heard about the world's first lab-grown burger. A cell biologist by training, Strickland wondered if similar technology could be used to culture human milk-producing cells, she tells CNN Business.
Strickland had struggled to produce enough breast milk for her first child. "A lot of women are grappling with this," she says.
Globally, only one in three babies receives as much breast milk in their first six months as experts recommend, says the World Health Organization. Instead, many parents rely on formula. The milk formula industry was worth over $52 billion in 2021, according to market research provider Euromonitor International.
Often based on powdered cow's milk, formula is "able to satisfy a lot of the nutritional requirements," Strickland says, but it cannot replicate "the complexity of human milk." Strickland says BIOMILQ's product, by comparison, better matches the nutritional profile of breast milk than formula, with more similar proportions of proteins, carbohydrates and fats.
The BIOMILQ team creates its product from cells taken from human breast tissue and milk, donated by women in the local community, who get a Target giftcard in return. BIOMILQ grows the cells in flasks, feeding them nutrients, and then incubates them in a bioreactor that mimics the environment in a breast. Here, the cells absorb more nutrients and secrete milk components.
BIOMILQ is still three to five years off from getting a product to market, Strickland says. First, the startup needs to grow mammary cells at a much larger scale — and at a lower cost. BIOMILQ also needs to convince regulators that the product is safe for babies, a task that is especially challenging for a new food category like lab-grown human milk products.
"There isn't really a regulatory framework that exists," Strickland says.
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