Grant may unlock milk’s secret for fighting childhood infections

UC Davis microbiologist David Mills was awarded a $100,000 challenge grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to test whether certain complex sugars in milk can be used to prevent life-threatening diarrheal diseases in young children.

Globally, these gastrointestinal infections are the second leading cause of death among children under the age of 5, each year killing 1.5 million children, according to the World Health Organization.

“The grant equips us to work with the California dairy industry to obtain and evaluate milk oligosaccharides that are found in whey, a byproduct of cheese processing,” said Mills, an authority on the molecular biology of lactic acid bacteria used in foods. “We will examine the ability of these compounds from milk to prevent gastrointestinal infections and to establish healthy bacteria in the intestines.”

For several years, Mills and colleagues have been researching the basic scientific principles of this study. They are now working with UC Davis’ Foods for Health Institute to move the basic research toward practical applications in human health.

With the Gates Foundation grant, Mills and UC Davis food scientists Bruce German and Glenn Young will work with the California dairy industry to obtain purified oligosaccharides from milk.
The research team will conduct a three-pronged study, examining to what extent oligosaccharides from cow milk influence growth of various intestinal microbes, promote colonization of healthful intestinal bacteria, and prevent Salmonella infection in laboratory mice.

Mills noted that if the researchers’ hypothesis proves correct, they plan to explore how oligosaccharides can be incorporated in a healthful, cost-effective manner into various food products designed for nutritional therapy and for use in international famine and malnutrition relief efforts.
(More information on this and related research is available from UC Davis’ Functional Glycobiology Program at http://fgp.ucdavis.edu/.

“This highly selective Gates award demonstrates the potential of UC Davis research to strengthen the role that dairy products play in delivering health and nutrition to the global population,” said Joseph O’Donnell, executive director of the California Dairy Research Foundation. “These studies will prepare dairy food developers to focus on a great variety of products based on cow milk, which naturally contains these health-promoting oligosaccharides.”