Novonesis partners with UC San Diego to create new HMO research incubator

25 Mar 2024 --- The Danish biosolutions company Novonesis is launching a human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) research consortium alongside the University of California (UC) San Diego, US, anchored to the university’s Human Milk Institute (HMI). The incubator aims to enrich the field of synbiotics by advancing knowledge about HMOs.

“The goal of the research consortium is to gain a better understanding of what HMOs are capable of doing on a deep mechanistic level and then create novel applications guided by the generated knowledge,” Lars Bode, Ph.D., founding director of the HMI, tells Nutrition Insight. “We let science speak first.”

“Synbiotics are a combination of prebiotics and probiotics. However, not all of these combinations are necessarily useful. The collaboration between the HMI and Novonesis will allow us to research and develop smart, targeted synbiotics by letting the science tell us what prebiotics and probiotics we need to combine to promote health outcomes.” 

Synbiotic innovation 
In the initial stage of the new partnership, Novonesis is providing start-up funding for five interconnected seed grants along with HMOs and probiotics for the research. The five grantees are expected to work together to leverage their skills and expertise. 

“The first step is to assemble a group of consortium members here at UC San Diego who commit their expertise and skills to study HMOs in a way we have not done before,” Bode explains. 

He explains that consortium members are experts in their own fields who often have never worked with HMOs before. “That’s where we see innovation — engaging and activating people who do amazing science and who now turn their attention to HMOs to uncover their full potential in new ways.”

“That’s why we are providing pilot grants to UC San Diego investigators in the very first phase to activate new areas of research.” He points out that “unlike many other pilot grant mechanisms,” HMI selects the pilot grants that are most interconnected with each other “to create a meaningful consortium for collective impact.” 

Bottom-up discoveries could lead to novel therapeutics and applications.Understanding HMOs
The research consortium sets out to advance HMOs knowledge and the field of synbiotics by building a bridge between the scientific community and the industry to facilitate knowledge exchange. 

Discussing the role HMOs play in synbiotics, Bode details: “HMOs are prebiotics and could foster the growth and effects of probiotics to be more efficacious. Yet, HMOs also have other effects either as antimicrobials or directly on the host and we need to make sure that they are protected and not utilized when they are part of synbiotics.”

“This requires a deep mechanistic understanding of what HMOs are capable of doing and what probiotics and eventually synbiotics are capable of doing,” he adds. 

“So far, we have only touched the very surface of this application field and we envision the collaboration between the HMI and Novonesis to bring together complementary and synergistic expertise and skills to advance the field of synbiotics.”

Practical implications 
Bode also sees potential applications of HMOs and synbiotics beyond infant health, which the new partnership will explore.

“We will let science guide potential applications. Traditionally, we search for solutions to specific health challenges. For example, we screen large compound libraries in the hopes to identify some that can help treat or prevent a specific disease.” He states that the new partners will turn this traditional approach “upside-down.” 

“We first study how these HMOs and synbiotics work on a molecular and cellular level. Then we leverage the generated knowledge and map those potential effects on health and disease models that could be positively affected by interfering in these molecular and cellular processes.”

Bode exemplifies this by pointing to a past HMI study of how HMOs affect the biology of the macrophage, a type of white blood cell that kills microorganisms. “We identified which HMOs are effective and how they do it. Armed with that knowledge, we were able to show that the effects of specific HMOs on macrophage biology have profound implications to interfere with atherosclerosis, a driver of cardiovascular disease, i.e., heart attack and stroke.”

He explains that such bottom-up discoveries could lead to novel therapeutics that are likely safe. “We feed HMOs with human milk to babies every two to three hours for months already, and our partners at Novonesis are able to make them available at large scale and relatively low costs.”

“This approach has the potential to transform the way we address some of the biggest health challenges in the world,” concludes Bode. 

By Milana Nikolova