0:00

Support for this podcast and the following

0:02

message come from Corrient. Corrient

0:04

provides wealth management services centered around

0:07

you. As one of the

0:09

largest integrated fee-only registered investment advisors

0:11

in the US, Corrient has

0:13

experienced teams that can craft custom solutions

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designed to help you reach your financial

0:18

goals, no matter how complex. Real

0:21

wealth requires real solutions. Connect

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with a wealth advisor today at

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corrient.com. Hey,

0:28

Future of Everything listeners. This episode is

0:30

all about the science behind artificial breast

0:32

milk. We're excited to share it with

0:34

you. Give it a listen and let

0:36

us know what you think. Send

0:39

a note to foepodcast at wsj.com.

0:41

Thanks for listening. On to the

0:44

show. Megan

0:51

Corcoran is a mom of two living in

0:53

Carmel, New York, about 50 miles north of

0:56

New York City. My oldest is

0:58

five. And when was your

1:00

youngest born? She was born April

1:02

24th. Oh, wow.

1:04

So she's so young. Yeah,

1:06

she's a baby baby. Even

1:11

before she gave birth to her first daughter, Hailey,

1:14

Corcoran says she had gotten the message loud

1:16

and clear. The best way to feed her

1:18

baby was to breastfeed. And

1:20

things initially went pretty smoothly. After

1:23

Corcoran went home from the hospital and settled

1:25

into life with a newborn, though, it surprised

1:27

her how much work breastfeeding was. My

1:30

experience is I felt like a dairy cow. So

1:32

I would always kind of go like, moo, when I

1:34

was attached to my pump machine. But

1:36

that's all I would do is I'd either have a baby

1:38

on me, or I'd be on the machine pumping. And that

1:41

was really stressful. When

1:44

Corcoran went back to work after three months,

1:46

she started to miss feeding times, which made

1:49

her body produce less milk. So

1:51

even though she had wanted to breastfeed her daughter

1:53

for a year, she found that

1:55

she simply couldn't. Breastfeeding

1:58

can be time consuming. According to

2:00

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a baby

2:03

will breastfeed about 8 to 12 times

2:05

in 24 hours during the first months

2:07

of life, and each feeding can last as

2:09

long as 45 minutes. I

2:11

gave her formula and I remember just crying and

2:13

being so distraught about that. Corcorum's

2:16

breastfeeding experience is pretty common. According

2:18

to the CDC, 83% of

2:21

children in the U.S. are breastfed at some point.

2:23

But at the one-year mark, the

2:25

recommended breastfeeding duration per the U.S.

2:27

Dietary Guidelines, the percentage of

2:30

babies being breastfed drops to 38%. And

2:34

so, many parents turn to formula,

2:36

which, fun fact, often includes

2:38

proteins from cow's milk.

2:41

Today's formulas have vitamins, minerals, fats, and

2:43

proteins, some of which are similar to

2:45

those in human breast milk. But

2:48

it's still not quite the same as breast milk.

2:51

Long-term health studies have found that

2:53

formula-fed babies are more likely to

2:56

develop health conditions such as asthma,

2:58

obesity, and even sudden infant death

3:00

syndrome, or SIDS. What

3:02

if there was a product out there that was closer

3:04

to human breast milk and imparted some

3:06

of the same health benefits to babies,

3:08

but was available, like formula? If

3:10

my pediatrician was like, you know, we did our

3:12

research, we've seen that there are results here, like

3:14

this is really good. I would

3:17

certainly try it. From

3:21

The Wall Street Journal, this is the Future

3:23

of Everything. I'm Alex Osella. Today,

3:25

we'll hear about three startups working to

3:27

create products that more closely resemble

3:29

human breast milk. If they

3:32

succeed, they could transform how we feed

3:34

babies in the future. Stay with

3:36

us. Support

3:48

for this podcast and the following message

3:50

come from Coriant. Coriant provides

3:52

wealth management services centered around you.

3:55

As one of the largest integrated,

3:57

fee-only registered investment advisors in the

3:59

U.S., Coriant has experienced teams

4:01

that can craft custom solutions designed to

4:03

help you reach your financial goals, no

4:06

matter how complex. Real

4:08

wealth requires real solutions. Connect

4:11

with a wealth advisor today at

4:13

coriant.com. On

4:22

a recent fall morning, I visited one of the

4:24

biotech companies working on the future of nutrition.

4:26

Hi, yeah, nice to meet you. Sorry. Sorry

4:29

about that. No, no, I just grabbed your hand. I got

4:31

all my gear. These were the offices of Helena, a

4:33

startup working on making a component of human

4:35

breast milk in the lab. Laura

4:38

Katz is its founder and CEO. So

4:40

what we do at Helena is

4:43

we make bioactive human

4:45

proteins. So proteins natively

4:47

found in breast milk, but they're actually

4:49

found throughout the human body. Protein

4:53

is just one component of breast milk,

4:55

which is surprisingly complex. Robert

4:57

Goodes is an engineering professor at Dartmouth

4:59

College and studies the components of breast milk.

5:02

Breast milk is a super complicated

5:04

mixture of things. It has a

5:07

ton of different components in it. So it's

5:09

sort of the nutritional components that you would

5:11

normally think of, like proteins, vitamins,

5:13

minerals, lipids, all of those fats,

5:16

like those things that we need

5:18

for growth. But Goodes

5:20

says breast milk contains more than nutrition.

5:23

It's got other elements key to a

5:25

baby's developing immune system, such as bioactive.

5:28

And she says breast milk is changing all

5:30

the time. Factors like what

5:32

a breastfeeding parent eats can change its

5:34

composition and its response to

5:36

a baby's health and nutritional needs. Breast

5:39

milk is actually more of a living fluid

5:41

than a sort of static fluid. We

5:44

know that breast milk can vary in terms of

5:46

composition over the course of the day. So some

5:48

of our work has shown that this can vary

5:50

even over the course of years. Because

5:53

of this complexity, most startups working on

5:55

artificial breast milk aren't trying to make

5:57

products exactly like human breast milk. at

6:00

least not immediately. Most,

6:02

including Helena, are just looking to replicate a

6:04

part of it. Helena's Laura Katz

6:06

again. I don't believe

6:09

we'll be able to capture everything in

6:11

breast milk, hopefully in our lifetime, but

6:13

probably not. The scientific community doesn't know

6:15

all of the things in there, and

6:18

it's dynamic. Katz founded Helena

6:20

in 2019, and the company

6:22

has received more than $35 million in

6:24

investment to date. The first

6:26

protein it's working on is called lactoferrin.

6:28

So the first protein that we're making,

6:30

lactoferrin, is a fascinating protein. I like

6:33

to say it's the most studied food

6:35

ingredient you've never heard of. Lactoferrin

6:37

is found in our bodies. It's also

6:39

in breast milk. In babies,

6:42

the protein has been associated with fewer

6:44

infections and helping the development of

6:46

their growing digestive systems. There

6:48

are a number of clinical trials currently

6:50

in the works that are assessing lactoferrin

6:52

as an intervention for conditions, ranging

6:54

from COVID-19 in adults to

6:56

neonatal sepsis. Dartmouth engineering

6:59

professor Britt Goodes says, yes,

7:01

lactoferrin is a key component in breast

7:03

milk. So she notes that infant growth

7:05

and nutrition are so complex that it's

7:07

hard to say whether any one factor

7:09

can be attributed to improved outcomes or

7:11

long-term health. There

7:14

are already products containing bovine lactoferrin on

7:16

the market, but according to the

7:18

company, what sets Helena apart is that they're making

7:20

a human form of the protein. They're

7:23

doing it through a process called precision

7:25

fermentation. Basically, it involves

7:27

genetically engineering microorganisms, in this

7:29

case yeast, to produce

7:31

a specific substance. Katz and

7:33

her colleague, chief technology officer, Anthony Clark, gave me

7:35

a tour of the lab to see how it

7:38

all works. Step one,

7:40

genetically engineer the yeast. So

7:43

what we do at Helena is we

7:45

grab yeast, which you can use to

7:48

make alcohol and beer. You can use

7:50

to make bread, but we're teaching it

7:52

how to make proteins. And

7:55

the proteins that a yeast is natively going

7:58

to produce when we ferment it. are

8:00

yeast proteins, which are great, but

8:02

not what we're interested in. So what we

8:04

tell the yeast to do is

8:06

make something human. After

8:08

selecting only the best, most efficient strains

8:11

of modified yeast, it's on to step

8:13

two. Make the yeast spit

8:15

out the desired protein. So we

8:17

have these big fermentation tanks. We throw

8:19

the yeast in there. We throw all

8:21

of the food that it needs. It's

8:24

called media and it grows.

8:26

It starts to spit the protein out.

8:29

The fermentation tanks sort of look like

8:31

little blenders running really fast. It

8:33

takes a week for the yeast inside to do its

8:35

thing. And after a few

8:38

days of making this protein, we purify

8:40

it using filters and different things to

8:42

kind of, I think about it as

8:44

like separating your spaghetti from the water.

8:46

That's really kind of what these filters

8:48

look like just at a very small

8:50

scale. And then we have this really

8:52

pure protein. The pure

8:54

protein is reddish pink in color.

8:56

The same dusty rose or millennial

8:58

pink echoed in the accents

9:00

around Helena's office. With that

9:02

in hand, it's on to step three. Putting

9:04

the protein in stuff so it can be

9:06

consumed. Cass led me to a

9:08

room where a big spray dryer was turning

9:10

the lactoferrin protein into a powder. It

9:13

kind of smells like cereal. Like

9:15

milk probably, right? Kinda, yeah.

9:18

A little sweet, yeah. Cass opened

9:20

a nearby refrigerator stocked with new products

9:22

in development. There were a few

9:24

jars of pink gummies and some clear

9:27

plastic bottles caught my eye. They were filled

9:29

with white and brown liquids labeled almond milk

9:31

and coconut milk and chocolate. Honestly,

9:34

they looked pretty tempting. Like a shake I

9:36

might pick up from my corner store. And

9:38

maybe at some point I could. Helena

9:41

currently has a clinical study underway assessing

9:43

the effect of lactoferrin on the immune

9:45

function of healthy adults. And we have

9:48

them drinking a drink mix and

9:50

it's our lactoferrin mixed with several different

9:53

things to make a mix. Kind of

9:55

like a crystallite package. So you pour

9:57

it in, it dissolves in water. White

9:59

adults are not. babies? Cat says

10:01

the infant nutrition product is going to take

10:03

a while longer. Of course

10:05

the company was started with the vision

10:07

and the mission to bridge the gap

10:09

between breast milk and infant formula, but

10:11

we've realized in growing the business and

10:13

making this protein the impact it could

10:16

have from early life to end of

10:18

life nutrition. So we are taking

10:20

that and using it in drink mixes and

10:22

gummies and all kinds of things where we

10:24

think we could have a really important impact

10:26

on human health. Other

10:29

startups are figuring out different ways to make

10:31

components of breast milk. They're using techniques that

10:33

have never been done before and

10:36

some are relying on actual human cells to

10:38

produce the milk in the lab. More

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11:33

When Leila Strickland had her first child

11:35

in 2009, she came to a realization

11:37

similar to Meg Corcrum, the mom of two we

11:39

met earlier. Breastfeeding can be

11:42

difficult. My background

11:44

and training is in cell biology and

11:47

I was nearing the end

11:49

of my postdoctoral fellowship when I became

11:51

a mother and discovered how challenging the

11:54

experience of trying to breastfeed a

11:56

child can be was pretty

11:58

unprepared for those of challenges. To

12:01

better understand why, by her description, her

12:03

body wasn't doing it well, Strickland started

12:05

to dig into the research around lactation.

12:08

And found that the

12:11

field had not been adequately studied, but

12:13

that there was a lot of reason

12:15

to think that you could model a

12:17

process of lactation outside the body. And

12:19

if you could do that, then it

12:21

would maybe make a product that you

12:24

could feed to babies that would be

12:26

more similar to breast milk than the

12:28

infant formulas that I was finding myself

12:30

needing to turn to in order to

12:32

support my own child's clothes. In 2020,

12:34

she co-founded BioMilk, a company intending to

12:36

create a product more similar to human

12:39

breast milk. It's raised about $25 million to

12:42

date. Its investors include Breakthrough

12:44

Energy Ventures, which was founded by Bill

12:46

Gates. But making that product

12:48

takes a lot of time and work.

12:51

Early on, Strickland learned that mammary

12:53

cells don't always work the same outside

12:55

the body. I've had my mind blown

12:57

by breast milk for the last three and

12:59

a half or four years. It is mind

13:02

bogglingly complex. To

13:04

make BioMilk's product, we just call it

13:07

cell cultured human milk. The

13:10

company first built up a bank of mammary

13:12

cells. And these cells all

13:14

come from lactating women who donated samples

13:16

of breast milk, which contains a lot

13:19

of cells that you can then culture

13:21

out. And so we built a cell

13:23

bank with mammary cells from women of

13:26

all backgrounds and all stages of lactation.

13:28

And then we started working through those

13:30

cells to see what are they capable

13:33

of? What can they do? The

13:35

banked cells are frozen until they're ready to be

13:37

used. After scientists bought the cells,

13:39

they allow them to multiply and

13:41

then place those cells in a bioreactor, a

13:44

3D environment in a lab that has everything

13:46

those cells need to grow. BioMilk

13:48

cells grow on a surface where they

13:50

form what's called epithelial tissue. Epithelia

13:53

cells create a lining, a barrier really, between

13:55

compartments in the body. That's what we're after

13:57

in our system as well is for these.

14:00

mammary cells to sit

14:02

down on this surface, attach to each

14:04

other, attach to the thing they're growing

14:06

on, and then form this lining.

14:09

In the bioreactor, there are long skinny

14:11

tubes, almost like straws. The

14:13

inside of each straw is filled with cell media,

14:15

the stuff that feeds the cells. On

14:18

the outside of the straw are the cells themselves. The

14:21

milk product the cells secrete ends up circulating

14:23

in the bioreactor and is extracted with a

14:25

syringe. Strickland says the whole

14:27

process, from thawing the sample to final

14:30

product, takes about 30 days. What

14:33

exactly is in that final product and when might

14:35

it come to market? Strickland can't

14:37

say it. Yeah, I would say

14:39

it's in a very early stage of development. I have

14:42

a lot of work to do to really

14:44

hone in on what is that specification

14:46

of molecules that we are making consistently

14:48

every single time. I would

14:50

hope we would have at least the beginnings

14:52

of this pipeline heading into market well before

14:54

2030. Israel-based

14:57

startup Wilk is also working

14:59

on cell-cultured infant nutrition. Avital

15:02

Beck is its CEO. Which

15:04

we are doing, and that's why it's super

15:07

hard and it's deep science,

15:09

we're taking a mammary tissue

15:11

from women and we are

15:13

culturing them in a lab.

15:15

And we're actually biomanicking the same

15:17

physiological process that is happening. This

15:19

is the same technology as the

15:22

human body. Wilk has honed

15:24

in on replicating the fats found in human

15:26

breast milk. Earlier this year,

15:28

Wilk closed around a funding with $2

15:30

million from French food company Dannon. It's

15:33

hoping to put a product on the market in 2027, but

15:35

there's a lot of work to do before

15:38

then. We are getting very

15:40

good results and we're growing. The

15:42

main challenge is the upscale.

15:45

So we do know how to

15:47

develop fat in the lab. Now

15:49

how do you upscale it and how

15:51

do you upscale it in a way

15:53

that will be financially available? To

15:56

be clear, these startups say they are not looking

15:59

to replace breast milk. They

16:01

say they're looking to give parents a

16:03

potentially better alternative to formula if they

16:05

decide to stop breastfeeding. But

16:07

before anything can hit the market in the U.S.,

16:09

they will need to meet the rules set by

16:11

the Food and Drug Administration. Of

16:14

course, there are frameworks for existing infant

16:16

formulas, but products from Helena,

16:18

BioMilk, and Wilk may need different ones.

16:21

Strickland says the regulations for

16:23

BioMilk's cell-cultured milk don't yet

16:25

exist. An FDA spokesperson

16:27

said that the agency is ready to

16:29

work with firms to support innovation in

16:31

human foods and encourages firms to have

16:33

conversations with them often and early in

16:35

their product and process development phase. Both

16:39

Helena's Laura Katz and BioMilk's Layla Strickland

16:41

say they intend to rigorously assess the

16:43

safety of their products as well as

16:45

their long-term health effects. Katz

16:47

says she plans to run many clinical trials

16:49

in the future. We are

16:51

building this company on a lot

16:53

of integrity. We don't want to

16:55

say something about this protein that

16:58

we can't back up with real

17:00

science. And if we

17:02

want to have an impact on different

17:04

types of populations — children, infants, elderly,

17:08

athletes, women — we need to do

17:10

the studies to support that, and we

17:12

can't do them all at once. Strickland

17:15

says BioMilk is developing protocols to

17:17

test its cell-cultured milk on lab-based

17:20

models, animals, and in healthy adults,

17:22

all before it passes a baby's lips. And

17:25

so it's really developing that safety profile first.

17:28

And then you start going into trials in babies

17:30

because you want to be able to really say,

17:32

like, does this thing do the thing that we

17:34

want it to do? Does it actually work? Both

17:39

Katz and Strickland also say that it's important

17:41

that their products be affordable enough to be

17:43

within reach for many parents. If

17:46

we look at the market today for infant

17:48

formula, there's one formula in

17:50

the U.S. with lactoferrin, the cow's milk lactoferrin,

17:52

and it's one of the most expensive in

17:54

the country. Lactoferrin

17:57

is incredibly important for infant

17:59

nutrition. and we're not

18:01

going to be able to get this

18:04

protein or anything else into products

18:06

without a cost that can match.

18:09

Actually there are a few formulas out

18:11

there that include lactoferrin these days and

18:13

they can be pricey. While most

18:16

popular powder infant formulas cost anywhere from

18:18

50 cents an ounce to well

18:20

over a dollar per ounce depending on

18:23

the store, Unfomile Inspire Optimum, one of

18:25

the formulas that contains lactoferrin costs over

18:27

two dollars per ounce. Though

18:31

no artificial breast milk products are

18:33

available yet, Casey Rosen Carroll, the

18:35

chief of breastfeeding and lactation medicine

18:37

at the University of Rochester, told

18:40

me parents are already starting to ask for them.

18:42

But she said she'd be hesitant to recommend

18:44

one until she saw long-term studies about

18:47

the health effects compared to formula and

18:49

breast milk. Others are

18:51

skeptical of the whole enterprise. Thinking

18:53

of breast milk only as

18:56

a product that can be

18:58

grown in labs is going

19:00

to contribute equivalent benefits as

19:03

breastfeeding is absolutely

19:05

false as we speak and

19:07

I just don't

19:09

think that at least in my lifetime that

19:12

it will ever happen. That's

19:15

Rafael Perez-Escamilla, a professor of public health

19:17

at the Yale School of Public Health.

19:19

Earlier this year, Perez-Escamilla co-authored a

19:22

series of articles in the scientific

19:24

journal The Lancet. One of

19:26

the biggest conclusions was that the marketing of

19:28

infant formula got in the way of parents

19:30

who might have otherwise breastfed. Pharmaceutical

19:33

company Perigo, which on its website says it's

19:35

the third largest formula maker in the US

19:37

and Canada, said via a spokesman that it

19:39

is not working on artificial breast milk at

19:42

this time. As for other

19:44

big formula makers, Abbott declined to comment

19:46

and Nestle did not respond to requests

19:48

for comment. at

20:00

all. The first step to

20:02

getting there may be adult nutrition. Helena's

20:04

Laura Katz says her company is working on those

20:07

products now with the goal of putting something on

20:09

the market next year. She plans

20:11

to use that revenue to support the development

20:13

of infant nutrition products. And

20:16

infant formula is something we're working on. It

20:18

just takes a longer time to get to

20:20

market because there's a few more tests you

20:22

have to do. You have to run a

20:25

clinical study in infants and we are currently

20:27

working on that but we just can't get

20:29

to market as quickly in infant as we

20:31

can in these other applications. In

20:34

the next few years, Helena and BioMilk plan

20:36

to make infant nutrition products that contain

20:38

parts of human breast milk not currently

20:40

found in formula. And so what

20:43

we believe the best way forward

20:45

to move infant formula closer

20:47

to breast milk is to make solutions

20:50

that can be useful to a population

20:52

as opposed to the individual knowing that

20:54

there's always going to be a personal

20:57

piece of what your breast milk looks

20:59

like. BioMilk's Layla Strickland says

21:01

she wants these infant nutrition products to

21:03

feed into her larger goal to create

21:05

a product that gets even closer to

21:07

the full complexity of human breast milk.

21:10

From a commercialization standpoint, we've had to

21:12

kind of start to think about like

21:14

okay what are the product

21:16

opportunities? And so what that has started

21:19

to look like for us is almost

21:21

a pipeline of products that we

21:24

think will be you know not

21:26

a complete food for your baby

21:28

but that will bring things into

21:31

infant formulas and early life nutrition

21:33

products that you can't get anywhere

21:35

else and that's the business that

21:38

we'll build to support the work

21:40

towards this whole human milk product. If

21:42

all goes well, she says she anticipates that

21:44

her company's work will benefit baby's health in

21:47

the long term and that new

21:49

parents will be able to feel confident in making

21:51

choices that are right for them. I

21:53

know how important it is when you're thinking about

21:55

what am I going to feed my baby, any

21:58

parent should be able to go to their pediatrician and

22:00

say, what do you think of this? Is this okay? Like,

22:02

is this a good idea? And we

22:04

want the pediatrician to be able to

22:06

look at the science and look at the evidence

22:08

that we've generated and say, this looks amazing. The

22:13

Future of Everything is a production of the Wall

22:15

Street Journal. Stephanie Ilgenfritz is

22:17

the editorial director of The Future of

22:19

Everything. This episode was produced

22:22

by me, Alex Osella. Our

22:24

fact checker is Aparna Nathan. Michael

22:26

LaValle and Jessica Fenton are our sound

22:28

designers and Rodor theme music. Catherine

22:31

Milsopp is our supervising producer. Aisha

22:34

El-Muslim is our development producer. Scott

22:37

Salaway and Chris Binsley are the deputy

22:39

editors. And Falana Patterson is the head

22:41

of news audio for the Wall Street Journal. Let

22:44

the show tell your friends and leave

22:46

us a five-star review on your favorite

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platform. Thanks for listening.