Professor Lars Bode

Professor Lars Bode
Direktor des Larsson-Rosenquist Stiftung Exzellenzzentrums für Muttermilch-Kind-Forschung (LRF MOMI CORE), University of California San Diego

Das LRF MOMI CORE arbeitet mit einem interdisziplinären Ansatz, um lebensgefährliche Krankheiten zu behandeln oder zu verhindern. Warum ist das wichtig? 

Die Idee ist, andere Wissenschaftler, Mediziner und Lehrende einzubeziehen und zu fragen: «Was könnt ihr zum Thema beitragen?» Sobald diese Experten die Themen Muttermilch und Stillen mit ihrem wissenschaftlichen Ansatz angehen, machen sie interessante Entdeckungen und beantragen an anderer Stelle Fördergelder. Und so multiplizieren sich die Finanzmittel. Fördermittel anzuziehen ist ein wichtiger Teil
der Stiftungsvision. In den letzten fünf Jahren unterstützte die Stiftung 21 Projekte mit USD 1 Mio. Auf  dieser Grundlage sicherten sich die ersten zehn Projekte Mittel in der Höhe von USD 4 Mio., was einem Return on Investment von USD 4 Mio. entspricht.

Die Art, wie die LRF-Forschungszentren konzipiert sind, bewirkt einen bahnbrechenden Wandel. Es ist höchst anerkennenswert, dass die Stiftung Forschenden die nötige Zeit gibt, Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen,die in der Praxis dauerhaft Wirkung zeigen. Jährlich stehen uns Mittel zur Verfügung, die anwachsen, was Scheitern erlaubt. Scheitern ist für Innovation unabdingbar. Es ist der Motor der Entdeckung.

Was sind Ihre grössten Erfolge?

Wir finanzieren auch Stipendien. Sara Moukarzel, PhD, war eine Stipendiatin. Sie hat zusammen mit Professor Alan Daly (Sozialwissenschaftler, Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaften) untersucht, wie sich Informationen über Stillen und Muttermilch auf Twitter, jetzt X, verbreiten. Allein aus diesem Projekt resultierten 12 Veröffentlichungen. Die Bedeutung des interdisziplinären Ansatzes unterstreicht auch die Förderfinanzierung für Drew Hall, a.o. Professor für Elektro- und Computertechnik, der eine Screening-Technologie zur Messung von Oligosacchariden am Ort der Behandlung entwickelte. Dies sind zwei meiner Lieblingsprojekte, weil sie Menschen aus verschiedenen Disziplinen zusammenbringen, die anders über Dinge nachdenken und sie dann realisieren.

Die Stiftung stellte während der COVID-19-Pandemie Mittel für Notfallforschung bereit. Was bedeutete das für Sie?

Bei Eltern und Gesundheitsfachleuten gab es Zweifel an der Sicherheit des Stillens. Deshalb schlossen wir uns mit einer Fachgruppe der University of California zusammen, um herauszufinden, ob es aktive Viren in der Muttermilch gibt und ob es sicher ist zu stillen. Diese Frage konnten wir sehr schnell beantworten. Das zeigt die besondere Beziehung zur Stiftung, die versteht, dass etwas dringend ist und buchstäblich über Nacht Mittel zur Verfügung stellt.

Um schneller auf Krisen reagieren zu können, bauen wir als Teil des Human Milk Instituts ein Rapid-Response-Team auf, das potenzielle neue Bedrohungen aufspürt. Ich sehe LRF MOMI CORE weiterhin als Motor der Entdeckung, der in diesem Bereich Innovationen hervorbringt.

Extended interview, in English

LRF MOMI CORE takes an interdisciplinary approach to treat and prevent deadly diseases like infections, diabetes and cancer – why is this important?

An interdisciplinary approach is crucial. If we stick to our silos and to the very limited things that we know and that we are skilled in, we're not going to go far. It takes a village, not only to raise a child, but to do science as well. 

Human milk research is such a broad topic, it has so many nuances. Even if we just focus on biomedical research which MOMI CORE is doing, you have so many different aspects and potentials for what human milk and breastfeeding can do to protect the child, to benefit the mom, and many other things. The whole idea of MOMI CORE is to engage other scientists, clinicians, educators in the conversation and ask: “How could you contribute, how does this topic relate to you?” 

In the beginning it was difficult to get people interested. They didn’t see the benefits, or they thought we knew everything about it already. The opposite is true. We know very little about it. It's not just nutrition, and it's studied at very few places, by very few people. Now I think the entire campus is fired up to talk about human milk and breastfeeding. We are able to engage other people and activate them. That's where our seed funding comes in. The moment people take their own approach and include a human milk or a breastfeeding lens, they create this magic data, and then they get so excited that they apply for funding elsewhere and it really starts multiplying.  

Could you speak more about seed funding, stimulated by the endowment from the Foundation? 

Stimulating funding is in large part the vision of the Foundation. I’ll give you a great example. Someone just asked about the next opportunity for MOMI Seeds grants. It was a senior postdoc transitioning into a faculty position who had never worked in human milk but saw huge potential. We didn’t have an opening, but I asked whether we could help. They described the project, and funny, we have a project that's collecting samples in a very similar way to what they would need. We were able to set aside aliquots so they could analyze those for their purpose – repurpose the same samples and use the funding that we'd invested already to generate twice as much data. 

Another example is, last year we got 16 applications but could only fund four. Just recently I got an email about one, saying they were funded elsewhere and would still love to do the project – could we help with it? Sure, great. All of it sudden it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, where there is a critical mass of people who are excited about human milk research, clinical application, education, everything from policies to public health. I think this has been the driving factor for us to start the Human Milk Institute.

But really key are some of the metrics. Over the last five years we invested about $1,000,000 in 21 seed grants, at $50,000 each. People are now generating data and applying for additional funding. The first 10 or so have been able to secure $4,000,000 in funding – a $4,000,000 return on investment. 

I remember sitting with Katharina, going through her now famous Excel spreadsheets to see what the endowment would look like if one of those seed grants would spin out into a major NIH grant. What would it look like over five, 10, 20 years? Asking how we could transform the field financially, which then transforms the field from a content point. Having that vision and that foresight to calculate it from a financial perspective is a game changer that will generate a legacy for years, decades, maybe centuries to come.

How does this “catalytic” or ‘innovation” capital accelerate innovative research?

The way that the LRF Research Centers are set up, both financially but also from an infrastructure perspective, will be a true game changer for this field. Kudos to the Foundation and Katharina and everyone who came up with this idea to allow researchers the time horizon to develop something in perpetuity – this is literally legacy building. 

Funding usually in our space is two years, five years maximum, if you go through the NIH or other funding bodies. It's a very limited time horizon. Having funds available every year in perpetuity, and for these funds to actually grow, is a game changer because it allows you to fail – and failure is absolutely critical for innovation. The path to innovation is to fail, learn from your failures, try something else or try it again in a different way. 

Usually with traditional research funding, that's not an opportunity. If you don't deliver, you don't get funded anymore. The vision that the Foundation has set in place is transformational. It not only provides funding for a long time period, but also it allows funding for innovative work that eventually will move the needle big time in this field. We call it the engine of discovery. It gives you great responsibility, but it gives you great possibilities and opportunities as well. 

Seven years and over 100 publications later, what are some of your major achievements? 

Not only do we give out seed grants, but we also have funding for fellows, for generating the next generation of scientists, researchers, clinicians, educators in this field. Sara Moukarzel, PhD, was one. Sara teamed up with Professor Alan Daly in our Social Sciences group, in the Department of Education Studies, to look at information dissemination around breastfeeding and human lactation on social media, Twitter. The amazing part was, their research project was ongoing at the time the WHO declared the COVID pandemic, so information that the WHO put out around breastfeeding was captured. 

Sara and Alan, who was her postdoc advisor, were able to see where this information was going, who was multiplying and tweaking it, and who were the voices in addition to the WHO. Fortunately, to our surprise, the information was disseminated fairly correctly. There wasn't a diversion, which happens quite often in our space. That was interesting and very different from what I’m working on, molecules in human milk. It was a completely different discipline that we brought in and made into a key aspect of MOMI CORE. That project alone generated 12 publications. That was quite a success and something that we did not anticipate when we started MOMI CORE. 

Another example that speaks to the interdisciplinarity of the center is about one of the early seed grants that went to Drew Hall, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was developing point of care screening technology to measure certain molecules and asked if we could apply it to human milk. We said it would be great to measure oligosaccharides, which my lab is highly interested in, at point of care. It takes weeks to get data back when you send samples to a lab, and only very few labs in the world can do this accurately.  

He submitted a grant. We funded it. And we published a couple of years ago. He can measure a drop of milk at the point of care with a device half the size of your cellphone – with a Bluetooth enabled sensor the data goes to your cell phone. That transforms this field because it allows us in the NICU to tell how much of a particular molecule is in human milk, whether it is safe or protective against a disease. Also, we can use it in milk banking for more informed pooling of milk samples. 

These are two of my favorite projects because they're bringing people together from different disciplines to think about things differently and then activating them. We didn’t anticipate either, and that is something we have to be mindful of – that innovation happens when you acknowledge that you don't know everything and can't solve everything yourself. 

The Foundation provided emergency research funding during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your findings informed WHO guidance, meaning infants continued receiving breastmilk. What did this mean to you?

The relationship that we had built with the Foundation was a game changer, once again. In a time of crisis, you don't have the time to search for funding, build relationships and then get going with research. The pandemic was declared, papers came out saying there was mRNA potentially in human milk – we needed a clear answer. There were parents, healthcare providers struggling, not knowing whether breastfeeding was safe or not. 

March 11th the WHO declared the pandemic. I was on the phone in the evening with Katharina, we said we need to do something in this space. I woke up at 5:30 am to an email from her that said “We’ll send you the money, get started. We need to have answers quickly.” Since we had samples and the funding in place, we got another gift from a philanthropist in our community almost the same day, so it doubled the amount of money to do this research. Then we teamed up with a group at UCLA, which we had worked with on HIV projects before, to find out if there was active virus in human milk and if it was safe to breastfeed.  

We were able to answer this very quickly; it took less than two months to get the full data, and we did share that data with the WHO. The paper was published in a high impact, peer reviewed journal in August, 161 days after calling the pandemic. In science that speed to publication is unique. However, the reason it was so fast was that we had those resources available immediately. It speaks to the very special relationship that we have with the Foundation, where they understand it's urgent, and make funding available literally overnight. 

But it also opened our eyes. 161 days is amazing under normal circumstances. During a time of crisis, it's still not fast enough with healthcare providers, parents being in the dark about whether breastfeeding is safe. We want to be better prepared to address crises faster, ideally even before a pandemic is called. So we're building a rapid response team here as part of the Human Milk Institute that works with our virologists and epidemiologists to screen for potential new threats. Having answers even faster than those 161 days is a goal that we set ourselves as part of that institute. 

Could you tell us more about MOMI CORE’s role within the Human Milk Institute (HMI)?

The HMI, remarkably, is the first and only human milk institute in the world. I get two different responses: “Why do you need a human milk institute?” And the second is: “Why is there only one?” We're very fortunate that our university leadership has seen the opportunity and the need to establish the HMI at UCSD, one of the top 20 universities in the world. It really elevates the study and application of human milk on so many levels. Without MOMI CORE and without being able to build this critical mass due to the Foundation’s endowment and vision, I don't think we would have the HMI. 

Moving forward, I see MOMI CORE continuing to be this engine of discovery that promotes innovation in this space. We have big plans to expand, for instance with the rapid response team. The Foundation was the catalyst in driving the HMI, and it's now a self-moving force. This is just the beginning.

I can't thank the Foundation and the staff enough for helping us to achieve our dreams, to have MOMI CORE, to have the HMI and everything else that's coming next. A huge and heartfelt thank you to everyone who's involved.