Breast milk protein’s superpowers lead to breakthrough for new class of oral drugs
Technion researcher Dr. Assaf Zinger says his team’s work shows that the proteins cover and protect nanoparticles as they pass through intestinal layers, conveying therapeutics
Reporter at The Times of Israel
Technion scientist Assaf Zinger began wondering about breast milk when his wife, Noa, was breastfeeding their newborn daughter, Tamara, five years ago.
His wife had just received the COVID vaccine, and Tamara was starting to develop symptoms of the vaccine.
“I thought, ‘Hey, wait a minute, nanoparticles should degrade in the stomach,” Zinger told The Times of Israel in a teleconference call. “They should not be absorbed in the small intestine.”
After two years of research, Zinger said he believes that his team of 16 scientists is the first in the world to show that breast milk proteins can be used to protect and deliver nanoparticles so that people will be able to receive their medication — not by injecting it but by drinking it.
“The study shows that human breast milk proteins can be used for drug delivery purposes, and as far as we know, nobody’s done this before,” Zinger said enthusiastically. “One day, we will walk down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, go into a Starbucks coffee shop, and order a pumpkin spice cappuccino with hormones, vaccines, or chemotherapy.”
The research, led by Dr. Zinger’s PhD students Si Naftaly, Rawan Mhajne, and undergraduate student Topaz Pery from the Wolfson Department of Chemical Engineering, as well as Prof. Maya Davidovich-Pinhas and Dr. Areen Ashkar, both from the Technion’s Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering.
The article appeared in the peer-reviewed Journal of Controlled Release.
More than 500 days of reserve duty combined
Zinger said the research continued even though he served as an officer in the armored corps of the IDF for more than 100 days since the war began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst across the Gaza-Israel border, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, amid rampant acts of brutality and sexual assault.
The following day, in solidarity with Hamas, the Iranian-backed terror-group Hezbollah began firing hundreds of rockets, missiles and drones from Lebanon into northern Israel, including at Haifa, where the Technion is located.
Three other researchers in Zinger’s lab also served during the war, for more than 500 days.
“When we came back from reserve duty,” Zinger said, “we pushed the science harder. We decided to go wild on it to show everyone that we are still here. We are alive, we are strong, and we just need to spread light. That’s the only way to really win, right?”
Zinger, who said he had wanted to be a scientist since he was 9 years old, said one hurdle for the researchers involved obtaining breast milk. Most breast milk donations to the national breast milk bank were allocated to babies who became orphans because of the October 7 massacre.
Zinger said that the women who work with him doing research in his lab – whom he nicknamed the “Amazons,” because “they’re super-smart and strong” – launched a local donation initiative within the Technion community to obtain the necessary breast milk samples.
“I thank both the women in the lab and the women who donated their milk to science,” he said.
Breast milk contains ‘keys’
Explaining his study — which received a grant from the European Research Council, the Israel Science Foundation, and the Israel Cancer Research Fund among others — Zinger said that breast milk is a “remarkable biofluid.”
Both the stomach and the intestines are barriers that prevent hazards from entering the bloodstream. But breast milk proteins can get through these barriers and help transport nano-particles containing therapeutics to the baby.
“If compounds in breast milk can cross this barrier, it means breast milk contains ‘keys’ that enable them to do so,” said Naftaly Kiros, one of Zinger’s co-researchers. “What are these keys? That was what we aimed to uncover.”
The “keys” the Technion scientists discovered were in a breast milk protein, which they named Human Breast Milk Protein Corona.
This corona, said Zinger, “forms a protein coating around a nanoparticle, allowing it to pass through the intestinal layers.”
The researchers confirmed their findings in both human intestinal cell line and pig intestinal samples.
Prof. Zahava Vadasz, deputy CEO of Bnai-Zion Medical Center, Haifa, said that the hospital is planning a future research collaboration between Zinger’s team at the Technion and the hospital, using the method to develop novel treatment strategies for autoimmune and infectious diseases.
“This is a true game-changer in medicine,” said Prof. Hossam Haick of the Technion, where he researches nanotechnology and biomedical engineering and also serves as the dean of Undergraduate Studies.
Haick’s groundbreaking research has led to the creation of technology that can mechanically “smell” elements in the breath of potential victims. The research into breast milk protein, Haick said, “brings us closer to a future where life-saving medications can be taken as a sip instead of a shot.”
