Got (extra) milk? At the U, it's a warm commodity
Nov 5, 2006

Star Tribune

When it comes to feeding newborns, experts agree, there's nothing like mother's milk. But now, a Minneapolis hospital has teamed up with a California biotech company to try to improve on Mother Nature.

The University of Minnesota Medical Center is collecting the "raw material" -- breast milk -- from nursing mothers who are willing to donate what they don't need.

Then it's shipped to Prolacta Bioscience of Monrovia, Calif., where it's modified and sold back to hospitals for $26 to $43 an ounce.

It's a high-tech twist on a story as old as Moses.

For thousands of years, surrogates were used to nurse motherless babies. Today, donor milk is being used to help premature and critically ill infants in newborn intensive care units.

"We'v! e known for a long time that breast milk has a lot of healing qualities," said Lora Harding Dundek, who runs the donor milk program at the university hospital.

For years, some nursing mothers have donated excess milk to nonprofit milk banks. Those centers typically supply it to hospitals for about $3.50 or $4 an ounce.

But the university's hospital decided to open the state's first milk bank in collaboration with a for-profit company. Prolacta re-engineers breast milk to ensure that every ounce has a precise number of calories and nutrients.

Skeptics wonder whether the high-tech treatment, and the high prices, are necessary. "Nonprofit banks have been providing milk for many, many years ... [and] the babies have thrived on it," said Mary Rose Tully, past president of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, a network of nonprofits.

"When you introduce a profit motive, you're introducing a whole different ballgame," Tully s! aid.

A better breast milk?

Doc! tors hav e known for years that mother's milk is one of the best ways to treat premature and sick newborns, said Dr. Michael Georgieff, a University of Minnesota specialist in newborn nutrition.

Among other things, breast milk helps fight off infections, which can be extremely dangerous to such fragile infants.

The problem arises when mothers can't -- or for some reason won't -- provide the milk themselves.

That's when Georgieff may prescribe donor milk.

But "human milk is highly variable in its content," he said. One ounce might contain 15 to 24 calories. And for premature infants, "15 calories per ounce just isn't going to cut it," Georgieff said. So it would be helpful, he said, to know exactly "what we're giving the kids."

That's where Prolacta comes in. Founded in 1999, it developed a way to pool milk from multiple donors and process it so that each ounce contains 20 calories, and has an identical amount of nutrients. It also produ! ces a human milk "fortifier" that's less likely to cause digestive problems than the commonly used one made of cow's milk, the company says.

"This is the first time you're able to treat a preemie with a complete human-milk solution," said Scott Elster, Prolacta's chief executive officer. He said research suggests that it's better for babies, but the company is only now "doing the studies to determine that."

Prolacta began selling the products, which are considered foods rather than drugs, in April.

Donors don't get paid

This summer, the U's children's hospital agreed to become one of Prolacta's suppliers. The hospital receives $2 an ounce, which Dundek says should cover its costs and maybe more.

"We're hoping that eventually ... we can actually make some money on this," she said. The profits would go to breast-feeding support services for new moms, she said.

All donors are screened to make sure they're he! althy. The company even does "DNA fingerprinting" on the donor! s, Dunde k said, "to make sure that everything in there is her milk ... or hasn't been topped off with a little Kemps."

Donors aren't paid, she added, because "we don't want to provide any incentive to give us milk instead of giving their baby milk."

Peggy Lin, a 37-year-old attorney from St. Paul, is one of the donors. She started in August, a few months after daughter Josephine was born. "I have been lucky enough -- this is my third daughter -- to have a lot of milk each time," she said. "This time, I was really determined to find something to do with it."

Lin started pumping milk after returning to work. "Every day, whatever we don't need for bottles goes in the freezer," she said. She considered a nonprofit milk bank -- the closest one is in Iowa City -- but chose the Minnesota program for its convenience. Every few weeks, she drives to the hospital and trades her frozen supply of bottles for empty ones.

"They just gladly accept whatever ext! ra you have," she said.

Some, though, worry that donors may be misled in the process.

"My big issue is that mothers are not being told that their milk is being sold for such a high amount," said Katy Lebbing of La Leche League International, which promotes breast-feeding. At $43 an ounce, it could cost more than $1,000 a day to feed a 10-pound baby with Prolacta -- 10 times the amount charged by nonprofits. "If you just do that math, that's quite a difference in money."

But Dundek said she tells potential donors they have options, including a nonprofit milk bank in Denver.

"We say if you're not comfortable with doing it this way, here's the contact information for Denver," she said. "Then it's up to those women."