Biomilq does seem to be onto something though, at least culturally. Since the postwar days of doctors pushing formula as the superior scientific option, the conventional and medical wisdom has swung in the opposite directionto the point where women often feel guilty for being unable to breastfeed. Theres just a feeling of failure: I cant do this for my child. This is really important, said Maryanne Perrin, a breast-milk researcher at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who has studied women trying to buy breast milk online for their children. I heard a lot of anxiety in the voices and comments, she added. In other words, there is definitely a demand for human breast milk.

The idea for Biomilq, in fact, came out of Stricklands own struggles to breastfeed as a new mom. Her son had trouble latching after he was born, and she wasnt making enough milk. During those months of life, my whole world revolved around whether or not my body would produce enough of this food, she says. She wished for an option that was not formula. Strickland has a background in cell biology, so she naturally wondered: What about breast cells?

In 2013, she began growing mammary cells in a tiny lab space in North Carolina, and in 2019, she met Egger, a student at Dukes business school and a former food scientist at General Mills, who had worked on products such as Go-Gurt. They officially launched Biomilq late last year to make lab-grown human milkor as they prefer to call it, cultured breastmilk. Another start-up based in Singapore, TurtleTree Labs, recently announced it is trying to re-create cow and human milk with cells as well.

Human milk is currently available for sale, but it is not easy to buy. Officially, parents can go to a milk bank to buy donated breast milk that has been screened and pasteurizedbut this requires a doctors prescription and can go for a hefty $4 or $5 an ounce to cover processing costs. (Milk banks also prioritize donor milk for sick or preterm infants in the hospital, for whom cow-based formula is particularly prone to causing a serious gut disease called necrotizing enterocolitis.) Unofficially, parents can go on Facebook or Craigslist or another online marketplace where women share or sell extra breast milk. These markets are cheaper and more convenient, but theyre also unregulated. Donors largely follow the honor system for disclosing medications and other health information. Meanwhile, formula is cheap, safe, and widely available in grocery stores. Biomilq promises to combine the nutrition of breastmilk with the practicality of formula.

Its hard to say, at this nascent stage, exactly how still-hypothetical breast milk made by cells in a bioreactor would compare with formula. The cultured human-milk proteins could be more suitable in a babys gut than dairy proteins, and sugars specific to human milk could help feed a babys new gut microbes.

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A Bold and Controversial Idea for Making Breast Milk - The Atlantic