Though they’re years from FDA approval, Helaina and BioMilq are banking on parents’ willingness to feed their newborns a product developed in a lab.
envisioned when they separately decided to develop synthetic alternatives to breast milk.
For Katz, the idea for Helaina came at 23, long before parenthood crossed her mind. She had left her global nutrition class at New York University’s Master of Food Science program and boarded the N train, playing Gimlet Media’spodcast to distract herself from the packed subway car. It was when the host described a new mom who drove hours and paid dubious internet characters for breast milk to nurse her infant that Katz realized no one had successfully brought to market synthetic breast milk.
Currently caregivers have the option of feeding infants with naturally pumped breast milk or infant formula, which is cow’s milk that’s scientifically altered to resemble human milk. BioMilq is another company hoping to capitalize on this vision of the future. With the backing of $25 million from investors like Gates, Novo Holdings and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Egger, BioMilq’s CEO and cofounder, plans to launch the synthetic human milk in the next three to five years. Rather than ferment yeast, like Helaina does, BioMilq takes breast milk and breast tissue, donated by women who receive Target giftcards as thanks, and grows human cells that can secrete milk.
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