Breast milk is the latest challenge for lab-grown food

A Melbourne start-up called Me& has announced the development of fortified breast milk produced in its laboratory.

And the Australian company is far from being the only one working in this often the ethically divisive field. However, the utility and potential of this new food innovation no doubt merits consideration at a time when demand for breast milk is high, from France to the USA.

Early 2022 saw a call for donations from French milk banks and the association SOS Préma because of a shortage of breast milk.

The situation was not new, since the ADLF, the association of French milk banks, stated that the Île-de-France bank for the Paris region had just 80 litres of breast milk in December 2021, when it usually stores 800 litres per month.

It was the same scenario in Lyon, with reserves of just 30 litres at the start of 2022. At the end of last year, a paediatrician in charge of the Bordeaux milk bank was already sounding the alarm, explaining that the uptick in Covid-19 had slowed down collection. Every year, 55,000 children are born prematurely and need to be fed breast milk.

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Their digestive system is too immature to support cow’s milk-based formula. In the United States, the context is different. Demand for breast milk has increased due to a severe shortage of infant formula, which made headlines in the country in spring.

Supply was first seriously affected by the pandemic. The situation then became critical when several infant milks were recalled in February by the American authorities because of potential bacterial contamination. Finally, breastfeeding was the subject of a major communication campaign, in a country that is heavily reliant on formula-based infant milk.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, less than a quarter of American babies are breastfed during their first six months of life.

In the meantime, breast milk has received much attention with the opening of an institute in California in October, dedicated entirely to researching the benefits of this precious resource. The aim is to identify all the scientific elements indicating that breast milk could serve as a remedy to treat chronic diseases such as heart infections or breast cancer.

The benefits of breast milk in preventing allergies in infants are already well-known, not to mention its ability to prevent infections, colds or gastroenteritis. Here, however, it’s about investigating the benefits of breast milk in terms of its treatment potential for adults!

Lab-grown breast milkFaced with this renewed focus on breast milk and the exponential demand, can laboratory-produced breast milk become a credible solution? Scientists from all over the world are already working on the subject.

Recently, an Australian start-up based in Melbourne (Me&) boasted of having developed the first fortified breast milk produced in a laboratory. But the race is on: in June 2021, an American company, based in North Carolina (Biomilq), claimed to be the first to have made cell-cultured human milk in its lab. It has even received backing from Bill Gates.

While the subject is socially sensitive, it is less so scientifically. An article on The Conversation website, written by Ruth Purcell and Bianca Le of the University of Melbourne, reported in November 2021 that by culturing mammary gland cells, extracted from breast milk and then fed with nutrients (as is the case with cellular meat), breast tissue can be transferred to a bioreactor “with a similar structure to the mammary duct.”

Then, by “simply” adding prolactin, the hormone responsible for milk secretion, breast milk can be obtained. Finally, the researchers write: “Eventually, further supplements naturally found in breastmilk could be added, such as beneficial antibodies and bacteria or even immune cells and stem cells.”

From Singapore to Canada, start-ups called TurtleTree Labs and Better Milk, respectively, are working on using mammary cells originating from cows to develop cell-cultured milk, potentially paving the way for an application in breast milk reproduction.

And the subject is being taken very seriously in the industry. Nestlé even posted a job offer last year to recruit a specialist in mammary gland development and lactation biology. All of this goes to show that this could be the start of something big.