If you have children - or plan to have them - you've probably already heard that "breastfeeding is the best". But what happens to mothers and babies who can't?
Prema World Health Organization, breast milk is an important source of nutrients and energy for infants, builds immunity against infections and helps reduce the risk of obesity, while potentially improving IQ later in life.
For mothers who cannot or do not want to breastfeed, the main alternative is milk formula.
But startups TurtleTri Lebs and Biomilk are trying to change that, making real breast milk just without the breasts.
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"My milk never started"
Mother of two Deepa Kulkarni remembers the difficulties she faced while breastfeeding her children.
"With my first child, I got colostrum, the child started sucking, but later I didn't continue to get milk, and with the second child it never started," she says.
Colostrum is the liquid produced by the breasts in the first few days after childbirth. It is dense and usually golden-yellow.
"We tried milking for a month, but I wasn't even getting 14 milliliters of milk a day, and after a while it just dried up. And so it was either we go ahead and let him starve or we feed my baby."
As a new mom, Dipa not only had a hard time becoming a parent for the first time, but also struggled with society's expectations.
"It was just one of those things that you have to accept and know that you didn't do anything wrong."
A new approach
Instant milk formula is often made from cow's milk that has been specially treated to make it more receptive to babies and provide the nutrients necessary for baby's growth and development.
But it doesn't offer all the benefits of breast milk - and that's what inspired these companies.
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TurtlTri Lebs uses stem cells from donated breast milk. The cells are placed in a bioreactor, where they are encouraged to become mammary gland cells.
The cells of the mammary glands are mixed with a special formula that causes the cells to secrete milk and that milk is filtered to get the final product.
In theory, this technique could be used to make milk from any mammal, as long as its stem cells are available.
Biomilk, a US-based startup led by nutrition scientist Michelle Egger and cell biologist Leila Strickland, uses a different technique to extract milk from mammary cells.
Scientists say that human milk is made up of a thousand components, such as proteins, fatty acids, hormones, bacteria and sugars.
But experts say that complexity makes it difficult to make a true replica of breast milk.
"Human milk is produced by elements that come from the mother's blood, the digestive system, the immune system, the immune system of the breast itself, but also fatty acids that the mother has broken down and which then entered the milk," says Dr Natalie Schenker, a breast milk researcher at Imperial College. in London.
She is also the co-founder of the Human Milk Foundation, an organization set up to support breastfeeding and tackle the lack of milk banks in the UK - where people can donate breast milk to others who need it.
Is it identical to the real oneo?
Scientists say that lab-grown milk can only hope to mimic some of the elements of human milk, especially when it comes to immunity and the human-to-human reactions that affect its composition.
Biomilk and TurtleTri Lebs say their goal is not to replace human milk but to provide parents with a sustainable and more nutritious option than formula milk.
"Breast milk is by far the best thing available and nothing can replace it. I don't believe it will ever be achieved, no matter what technology you use, because it's very personal and unique to the mother's environment, where she lives, what she feeds on," says TurtleThree Lebs co-founder Max Rye.
"We want to produce something that can improve what you have available right now, which is basically cow's milk powder mixed with a bunch of vegetable extracts and a lot of other things that are very, very far from mother's milk."
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In the last few decades, scientific research has shown that the mother tailors milk specifically for each child.
Human milk varies on an immunological and genetic level, and even the sugars that go into the milk can vary between each mother and baby.
"Human milk is like fingerprints that uniquely identify the mother and the baby's diet," says Dr. Schenker.
"It is a two-way process, there is an interaction between what the mother experiences in her environment, but also vice versa. If the mother is exposed to a bacteria or virus, the immune system will produce antibodies, which then attack the breast and enter the milk, protecting the baby from that specific pathogen."
WHO recommends that mothers breastfeed their newborn babies for at least the first six months.
Globally, only 40 percent infants younger than six months are exclusively breastfed.
Dipa now lives with her family in Delhi, India, and says her children suffered no ill effects from being fed formula as babies.
"Now, 18 years later, I see no difference in my closeness with my daughter or son, and I see no difference in their health," she says.
Is it sustainable?
Dr Schenker argues that creating an alternative to formula and breast milk faces a number of challenges, including whether it will ever be commercially viable.
"Blood and milk aren't really that different as fluids," she says.
"Milk has evolved over millions of years to become a source of nutrients as well as a way to support the development of immunity and organs in the newborn, which actually makes it more complicated than blood."
"Despite more than 70 years of research into artificial blood to solve the problems of blood donation, there is no commercially viable blood product on the market that is safe and effective, and that's after some pretty extensive private research."
"When you look at it from that perspective, the chances of producing anything close to mother's milk are virtually impossible. But that doesn't mean that some elements of mother's milk can't be reconstructed to a certain extent."
In June, Biomilk received $3,5 million and TurtlTri Lebs received $3,2 million in funding.
Breastfeeding support groups and doctors say the investment awarded to these companies could have been better used to help mothers breastfeed or improve access to milk banks.
TurtlTri Lebs, which received funding from the Singapore government, says more money is needed to help mothers who breastfeed as well as mothers who can't or don't want to.
"I don't think it has to go exclusively to one side or the other," says Raj.
"I think there needs to be some effort on both sides, where mothers who cannot breastfeed will have access to better or higher quality formula and a significant amount of money will go towards promoting education and helping mothers with breastfeeding."
TurtlTri Labs plans to sell its technology to formula makers instead of directly to consumers, while Biomilk plans to sell it directly to consumers.
"Technology is advancing very quickly and the most exciting thing about what we can do is the scale. We plan to start launching some of these products on the market already next year," says Raj.
Although the goal is to provide accessible products, TurtleTri Lebs says the price will be high at first.
"The first products are always very expensive, but after about a year, so many are on the market that the prices start to drop dramatically," says Raj.
"We expect the same thing to happen with this product, but at first it could be something that is ultra-exclusive."
"My biggest concern is safety"
Shirin Friday exclusively breastfed her first child for 15 months, but could not do the same with her second daughter due to work commitments.
"When I gave birth to my daughter 10 years ago in Grenada, the only options I knew were to breastfeed or formula feed," she says.
Shirin admits that as a young mother she did not know about all the available options such as pumping milk and that it was generally accepted as the norm to exclusively breastfeed a child.
With her second daughter, she used formula from the beginning so she could go back to work more easily. But at six months, her daughter stopped taking formula.
“I tried everything, but she just didn't want anything but breast milk, so I had to pump for the first time in my life. Now she's 16 months old and I'm still breastfeeding her."
“My journey of learning to pump was very difficult; it was lonely work and mentally very tiring, because you just sit and pump, and it can take up to 30 minutes, depending on how much milk you have. For me, pumping was more painful than breastfeeding - it was constant pulling and pulling."
Shirin says she would be reluctant to try bioengineered milk as an alternative to formula or breast milk.
"I think like any mother, I'm definitely most concerned about safety, especially when it comes to anything created in a laboratory. Babies are vulnerable enough anyway, so even if they can say it's 100 percent safe, I wouldn't be relaxed. I'd probably just stick with the old-fashioned formula."
TurtleThree Lebs say that part of the biggest challenge they face is educating people about how their milk is made. They say that the solution they use to grow the cells does not contain any synthetic chemicals.
"The medium or solution in which we put the cells closely mimics a human body or a cow. People can consume it without any problem," says Raj.
Critics have expressed concerns about the regulation and transparency of these new products.
The TurtleThree Lebs say that most information about the milk itself, the final product and how it is produced will be released before any product is available for parents to purchase.
"None of this is going to make it to market without extensive testing and testing, especially if you're working with big formula companies that people already trust," he says.
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