One of the key benefits of breastmilk over formula current is the immune benefits being passed from mother to child. Why is it not possible to artificially create antibodies etc and add it to formula? Formula already has the other nutritional benefits. And babies who take donated breastmilk are fine, so the immune benefits exist even if it’s not from the baby’s own mother.
In: Chemistry
Antibodies are extremely complex molecules, proteins that is. Insulin is an extremely simple peptide protein compared to antibodies. And it took decades to mass produce it cheaply in yeast.
They cannot just be synthesised in a chemical factory.
The only way to produce them is use genetically engineered cells. Human cells, hamster cells, E. coli or yeast.
But the different to human the cells are the more likely the antibodies themselves are going to be detected as foreign by the recipient.
That‘s because despite being provided the same genetic code for those antibodies each species attaches a signature pattern of sugar molecules to protein it creates.
So even if you could determine a blanket solution of various antibodies (since as others have written, antibody makeup varies massively between mothers depending on vierr the tally everything ) they would be extremely expensive.
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