Join five world experts from chemistry, nutrition, engineering, and medicine as they share their insights on the challenges and solutions on navigating the theme: Milk Diagnostics and Therapeutics for Lactating Parents and Babies.
Meet the Speakers
TITLE: Development and Application of Reference Values for Nutrients in Human Milk
ABSTRACT: Human milk is recommended as the sole source of nutrients for at least the first six months of life. This recommendation assumes that human milk contains and supplies adequate amounts of nutrients during this period, but there is evidence that poor maternal diets and/or nutritional status lead to lower concentrations of milk micronutrients. The challenge was to define what is “low” by developing Reference Values (RVs) for concentrations in the milk of healthy, well-nourished but non-supplemented women in four country sites. This was achieved through a series of studies including validation of methods for milk collection; efficient, relatively high throughput analyses of milk nutrients; assessment of milk volumes; and publication of RVs as percentiles. The RVs will next be used to evaluate the adequacy of milk composition using published data from our lab and other investigators, and to assess the efficacy of maternal micronutrient supplementation for improving milk nutrient concentrations. We will also improve knowledge of the relative importance of factors that affect milk composition, including maternal diet and micronutrient status, and maternal genomics.
Dr Allen is a Distinguished Research Scientist and former Director at the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Western Human Nutrition Research Center (WHNRC) and an Adjunct Professor at the University of California Davis. She studies prevalence, causes and consequences of micronutrient deficiencies, primarily in developing countries, and has ≈350 publications. Her current focus is the nutrient composition of human milk around the world, development of analytical methods for efficient analysis of multiple milk nutrients and setting Reference Values for global application. Her laboratory evaluates the efficacy of interventions to increase micronutrients in milk and recipient infants. Dr. Allen served as VP of IUNS, and twice as President of the American Society for Nutrition, and received the Kellogg International Nutrition Prize, the McCollum International Lectureship, and Conrad A. Elvehjem Award for Public Service in Nutrition. She is a Fellow of IUNS and ASN and a member of the ARS Science Hall of Fame. She has helped to develop guidance on micronutrient requirements, working with many national and international agencies. She has served on 13 committees of the National Academy of Sciences providing input on mineral and vitamin requirements, food labeling and nutrition in pregnancy and lactation. She worked on many Committees for the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the US Agency for International Development, the Micronutrient Forum and the National Institutes of Health, among others.
Dr. Hampel is a Project Scientist at the University of California Department of Nutrition and the USDA/ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center. Her research bridges food chemistry, molecular biology, and nutrition, focusing on developing analytical methods and studying natural compounds with potential health benefits. She specializes in nutrient and metabolomics analyses of human milk, plasma, and red blood cells to evaluate maternal and child nutrient status, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. With extensive training in analytical chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology, Dr. Hampel brings a broad toolkit to the development, evaluation, optimization, and validation of advanced analytical techniques.
TITLE: Nutritional Challenges and Advancements in Extremely Preterm Infant Care: A Review of Current Practices and Future Directions
ABSTRACT: Advances in neonatal care have improved survival rates for infants born as early as 22 weeks gestation, necessitating specialized nutritional management in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Human milk, especially mother’s own milk (MOM), is the preferred nutrition source for these vulnerable infants, with donor human milk (DHM) recommended when MOM is unavailable. To meet the increased nutritional demands of preterm infants, human milk fortifiers (HMF) are routinely added, as optimized protein intake is associated with improved growth and neurodevelopment. Despite these advancements, significant challenges persist in NICU nutritional management. These include limited MOM supply, lower protein content in DHM compared to preterm MOM, and uncertainty regarding the optimal composition of HMF for providing the best balance of macro- and micronutrients. Further research is needed to address these challenges and optimize nutritional outcomes for extremely preterm infants, ensuring the best possible start in life for this vulnerable population.
Dr. Cacho is a physician scientist with a focus on human milk research aimed at improving nutritional outcomes for critically ill and premature infants. Currently, she is investigating the protein content in premature infant feeds by examining both mother’s own milk and pasteurized donor human milk along with human milk fortifiers. She has a clinical interest in promoting direct breastfeeding in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) and Pediatric Critical Intensive Care Units (PCICU) neonatal populations.
TITLE: Got (Optimal) Milk? Pooling Donations in Human Milk Banks with Machine Learning and Optimization
ABSTRACT: Human donor milk provides critical nutrition for the millions of infants that are born prematurely each year. While the macronutrients in donor milk are critical to infant development, their levels vary by donation and across donor milk banks. In collaboration with Rogers Hixon Ontario Human Milk Bank, we developed a data-driven framework to pool multiple donations using machine learning and optimization. Over a one-year trial, our implementation yielded significantly higher macronutrient content than current pooling practices, with the proportion of pools meeting clinical fat and protein targets increasing by approximately 31%, with a 60% decrease in recipe creation time. Our data-driven approach efficiently improves the nutrient content of pooled donor milk, providing an accurate and high-throughput solution for meeting the nutritional needs of premature infants.
Timothy Chan is the Associate Vice-President and Vice-Provost, Strategic Initiatives at the University of Toronto, the Canada Research Chair in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health, a Professor in the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and a Senior Fellow of Massey College. His primary research interests are in operations research, optimization, and applied machine learning, with applications in healthcare, medicine, sustainability, and sports. Professor Chan received his B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia (2002), and his Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007). Professor Chan has over 120 publications in refereed journals, and is co-author of an upcoming book entitled “Introduction to Markov Decision Processes”. He has graduated over 50 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and takes great pride in cultivating a healthy, inclusive, and productive lab environment. Professor Chan has received numerous awards and honours for his research, teaching and service. Recent highlights include the President’s Teaching Award from the University of Toronto in 2024, 1st place in the research paper competition at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in 2024, the INFORMS Prize for Teaching OR/MS Practice in 2023, the Pierskalla Best Paper Award from INFORMS Health Applications Society in 2023, 1st place in the INFORMS Case Competition in 2022, and the CORS Eldon Gunn Service Award in 2022. His research has been featured by the CBC, CTV News, Global News, Reuters, CNN, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Boston Globe, ESPN, Canadian Business Magazine, and World Economic Forum.
TITLE: The Development of Glycomic Analysis for Human Milk Oligosaccharides
ABSTRACT: The development of methods for the extensive and quantitative characterization of human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) has greatly enhanced our understanding of the role of fiber in our diet. Characterizing HMOs presents unique challenges compared to other biopolymers due to the sheer complexity of their primary structures, which result from a large number of linkages and chemical isomers. For this reason, their primary role in infant health remained unknown for nearly a hundred years after their initial discovery. Recent advancements in methods for mass spectrometry (MS) ionization, new mass analyzers, and microfluidic chromatographic separation, along with systematic characterization of nearly every structure, have led to highly quantitative profiling methods that help reveal their function as food for microbes in the nascent infant gut. This presentation will describe the efforts that have led to the development of a robust and automated glycomic profiling of HMOs, yielding relative and absolute quantitation of hundreds of structures in various fluids and tissues including human milk, blood, urine, and feces.
Dr. Carlito B. Lebrilla is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Davis in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine in the School of Medicine. He received his BS degree from the University of California, Irvine and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and a NSF-NATO Fellow at the Technical University in Berlin. He returned to the UC Irvine as a President’s Fellow and has been at UC Davis. He has served as Chair of the Chemistry Department. His research is in Analytical Chemistry focused on mass spectrometry with applications to clinical glycomics and biofunctional food. He has co-founded several start-ups in the areas of bioactive foods and disease biomarkers. He has published nearly 500 peer-reviewed papers and has been selected as a Fellow of the AAAS. He has been awarded the Field and Franklin Medal for outstanding contributions to mass spectrometry, MCP Lectureship in Glycobiology, UCD Outstanding Researcher Award and UCD Innovator Award. He is also Co-chief Editor of Mass Spectrometry Reviews and has been on the editorial board of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, Glycobiology, Mass Spectrometry Reviews, Journal of American Society for Mass Spectrometry, European Mass Spectrometry, and International Journal of Mass Spectrometry. He is currently the VP of Programs and the President-Elect for the American Society of Mass Spectrometry.