Biomilq, Growing Human Breast Milk in a Lab
Courtesy of Biomilq
Biomilq, a Durham, North Carolina-based biotech startup, is on a mission to create a technology that allows them to cultivate human breast milk outside of a mother’s body using mother-cultured cells. What sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, has the possibility of seriously changing the infant formula industry, a market that’s expected to reach $109.10 billion by 2027 worldwide. Breast milk has long been considered the holy grail to a child’s early growth, with organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics recommending children to be breastfed for the first six months of their lives.
So far, Biomilq has been able to reproduce more than 2,500 components that make up human breast milk. With a subscription-based model for personalized breast milk, Biomilq could fill gaps for mothers (or fathers) who have busy lifestyles or choose to mainly feed formula. The startup, which is still in development phase, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding so far, with backing from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Bill Gates’ investment firm focused on climate change.
We connected with Biomilq’s cofounder and CEO Michelle Egger to discuss how the idea came about and how the process actually works.
Hi Gray: Biomilq’s idea to create lab-grown breast milk is ingenious, especially if you think about who could benefit from using the milk, as well as the babies themselves who require breast milk to develop strong. How did the idea come about?
Michelle Egger: We see that mothers are having children later in life. They tend to have more income and are making more family planning decisions about how many children to have and when. And so while formula may be an option that is convenient it lacks hundreds of the sugars that are naturally occurring breast milk human milk oligosaccharides, which are …