“Believe it or not, we still don’t know exactly what is in human milk,” Dr. Lars Bode, director of the Human Milk Institute, told NutraIngredients. “There’s probably still a bunch of components that we don’t even know that they’re in there, and then there are a lot of components that we know they’re there, but we don’t know what they do. And that’s really a blind spot that we’re trying to close to understand what these molecules are, and eventually, what do they do for the infant, for mom, and can we also explore that to develop new solutions for people of all ages.”
The new Milk Analytics Core (MAC) is designed to close those knowledge gaps by bringing advanced analytics into one coordinated research pipeline. The MAC will investigate the bioactive molecules in milk that influence immune development, long-term disease risk and maternal health, positioning milk as a source of therapeutic discovery, not just calories.
There has been growing interest in the human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) in breastmilk as potent prebiotics that help kick-start an infants microbiome and may offer benefits throughout the lifespan, but Dr. Bode noted that there are many other things in human milk, including bioactive lipids, bioactive proteins, peptides and so on.
“And then, of course, a lot of things that we don’t name yet because we don’t know that they exist,” he said. “I really see that as a discovery tool but also as an innovation tool where you can identify new components, new ingredients, potentially to really deliver to all kinds of platforms.”
Discovery
Looking at the potential of human milk for lifelong health, Dr. Bode noted that by understanding the different components and what they do to the baby, and then drilling into how they work on a deep molecular level could allow us to apply these beneficial components in other areas and for other age groups.
“For example, we have a project on a specific oligosaccharide that could potentially treat cardiovascular disease,” he said. “You would potentially have something that certainly is safe, because we give it to babies every two to three hours for the first few months of life, and we know it’s efficacious. Can we use that as a new therapeutic to prevent or treat cardiovascular disease—heart attack and stroke, major killers currently in the world. And can you extend this to cancer, diabetes, all kinds of major diseases we’re thinking of? There might be a solution in human milk. We just haven’t discovered it yet.”
Dr. Bode highlighted that one area that offers fascinating potential active nutrition and human performance.
“That’s what human milk is doing for the baby, right? Helping the baby to grow a lot of muscles, grow a lot of tissues, recover, all those kinds of things,” he said. “So, there is a huge potential for having these molecules and applying them in the sports nutrition field as well in performance enhancing applications in general, and this could be good for the athlete. This could be good for the everyday person.”
The MAC was established through support from the University of California San Diego, the Mother-Milk-Infant Center of Research Excellence (MOMI CORE), endowed by the Family Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation, as well as the NIH/NICHD MPRINT Center of Excellence in Therapeutics at UC San Diego.
Watch the video for the full interview.
