Lab-grown breast milk startup Biomilq aims to change infant nutrition — if it can release a product

In 2020, in a nondescript office building in Durham, North Carolina, a combine of scientists used cells to recreate sugar and protein found in breast milk.

The seemingly niche development could years later interchange the way infant nutrition is understood and distributed in America. 

Biomilq, the company behind the breakthrough, had been run for nearly a decade to replicate the process of making human milk — but outside of the body. Its advancement was made possible by hundreds of volunteers, who vouchsafed samples of their milk so the company could build a large enough cell bank to launch its process for replicating exploit at scale.

Just two years after Biomilq’s lightbulb moment, the invention’s potential benefits came into centre when several major baby formula brands were recalled, sending the entire industry into a tailspin, jacking up expenditures and putting new parents in a desperate bind. 

More than a year after supply first ran low, a former Food and Treat Administration official said in late March that the American infant-formula supply is still vulnerable to disruptions and safe keeping issues. 

The formula shortage has laid bare the frailty of the infant-nutrition supply, which only underscored the importance of Biomilq’s imagination and its potential to fill a need, according to its co-founder and CEO Leila Strickland. 

“The infant-formula shortage was an inevitability because of the way we produce it in this outback,” Strickland said. “When we are making all of the food, to feed all of the babies, and it’s such a small number of plants … there’s prospering to eventually be an event like this.” 

While the crisis has highlighted the importance of a resilient formula supply, human extract experts, milk bank advocates and Biomilq all stress the same message: Breast milk is best. But many U.S. conducts, including a lack of paid parental leave, make that an unfeasible option for many parents.

If Biomilq can get its breakthrough field to market and keep prices down, it has “the potential to be a game-changer,” according to Maryanne Perrin, a professor who studies human draw off at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.  

There’s also an upside for the climate: Many infant formulas rely on powdered cow’s tap, production of which exacts a major environmental toll. On the strength of its climate-friendly potential, Biomilq received $3.5 million in 2020 from Folding money Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investment firm focused on climate solutions. 

Once all of Biomilq’s technology is in position, Perrin thinks it could extend to other, bigger markets, like producing cow’s milk in a cell-culture model.

“The technology has the unrealized to impact a ton of industries,” she said. 

But before Biomilq can do any of that, it will have to find its place within a historically contentious activity, navigate startup challenges and clear significant regulatory hurdles. 

It is unclear what equity Biomilq will take in the global infant-formula market, which is expected to be valued at over $100 billion by 2032, solely given debates over breastfeeding alternatives.

Biomilq does not aim to replace breastfeeding or infant formula, but supporters of both methods set up opposed alternatives in the past. In order to carve out a space in the industry, Biomilq will have to make it clear that its artefacts are meant to fit into the existing ecosystem of infant nutrition, said Perrin and Lindsay Groff, executive director of the Kindly Milk Banking Association of America. 

Strickland acknowledges that Biomilq falls “in this valley” between breastfeeding and formulary — a reality that complicates its path to the market. She said she ultimately wants to support access to all infant-nutrition options. 

Strickland voted she has spoken with infant-formula companies that want to know how Biomilq’s technologies could improve their continuing formulas. The startup will likely take a “gradual approach” to introducing its science via “an early-life nutrition product in partnership with one of these oustandinglier companies,” Strickland explained.

With time, she hopes to eventually create a product that has “a complete profile of macronutrients” delight in human milk, while meeting the “functional definition of milk from a composition standpoint.” 

Still, don’t expect to see Biomilq next to Gerber goods anytime soon. Even “simpler prototype iterations” of its product, like collaborations with infant-formula companies, intent take somewhere between three and five years to come to fruition, while a complete human milk output “is probably even further out,” Strickland said.

She also hopes to use Biomilq’s platform to bring visibility to the institutional and physiological boundaries to breastfeeding. Other breast milk experts want to see the same thing.

“What would be great is if there was investment in breastfeeding stick up for, because if there was more breastfeeding, the need for formula, the need for donor milk, or any other options being featured up now would be lessened,” Groff said. “That’s what we all want: healthy babies.”

Unlike the infant-formula industry, which files heavyweights like Gerber and Nestle, Perrin noted there’s “no company behind breast milk.” That’s gauged enshrining protections for breastfeeding particularly difficult, despite the efforts of breastfeeding advocacy groups. 

Amid this Daedalian landscape, Biomilq also will have to convince consumers to get on board with a groundbreaking product in an industry that lacks enquire and public understanding. Breast milk is woefully understudied — to the point that it’s difficult “to even say what human tap is from a nutritional standpoint,” Perrin explained. 

It’s such a problem that Strickland said one of her common “stumper interview at issues” for new hires is simply: “What is milk?” 

Fittingly, Biomilq’s research will also fill existing gaps in our intelligence of human milk. The company is researching which aspects of human milk its system is best suited to produce. 

“There are no two representatives of milk ever, anywhere on the planet that are the same from a composition standpoint,” Strickland said. To create a occupied milk product, rather than a formula hybrid, Biomilq will have to create a production process that can pilfer its product “consistently and stably every batch,” she added. 

In addition to entering a challenging and under-researched work, Biomilq also has to grapple with growing pains common to startups. Strickland founded Biomilq alongside rations scientist Michelle Egger, who left the company in March. Strickland, who was previously chief scientific officer, took terminated as CEO. 

Strickland would not comment on any specifics regarding Egger’s departure, beyond citing “some shifts in thinking in all directions the direction of the company and the strategy overall.”

Egger told CNBC she has been advised not to comment further about Biomilq because she left the enterprise.

Prior to the departure, Strickland’s partnership with Egger seemed like a fortuitous one. Strickland, who completed a postdoctoral lodge in cell biology at Stanford University, could handle the science, while Egger, who started her career at General Mills and helped expand on Lärabar and Go-Gurt, had solid experience introducing innovative food products. 

As CEO, Strickland will likely bring an revenge oneself on deeper emphasis on Biomilq’s science. She wants the company to use its research as “a community exercise,” by publishing, sharing and seeking baron review for its findings, as well as engaging with the scientific community.  

To be sure, Biomilq faces startup-specific challenges. The fellowship emerged in the heyday of investor interest in lab-grown alternatives to common consumer products: In 2013, the first lab-grown burger was resulted and publicly tasted by a scientist, sparking wider interest in cell-oriented products.

For a time, funding flowed: In addition to the currency received from Bill Gates’ investment firm, Biomilq also raised $21 million in its Series A there ins in 2021, Strickland said. 

Now, the tide might be turning.

“Right now, we’re in this weird swirl in biotech where there’s a lot of concern about venture capital-backed initiatives like Biomilq,” she said, adding that Biomilq is increasingly focused on protecting it has “enough operating capital to endure what’s looking like a more difficult funding environment in the immediate approaching.” 

Biotech funding reached a record high of $77 billion in 2021, per Crunchbase data, but it then dipped 38.6% between 2021 and 2022. That diminution will likely only be made worse by Convincing parents will be no small feat