Project Grant R01HD112363

This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (CFDA 93.865: Child Health and Human Development Extramural Research) provides $682,076 to the University of Rochester to study the composition, dynamics, and delivery of human milk and its impacts on infant health.

The key objectives are to: 1) Detect temporal changes in human milk composition and compare these trajectories between infants fed human milk at-the-breast versus those fed expressed/pumped human milk, 2) Identify relationships between human milk composition/dynamics and infant sleep patterns, comparing differences between the two feeding groups, and 3) Identify relationships between human milk composition/dynamics and the developing infant microbiome, again comparing differences between the two feeding groups.

The project will leverage a multi-omic analytical approach to thoroughly characterize human milk samples collected daily from 120 mother-infant dyads over the first 4 months postpartum. The findings are expected to inform precision nutrition guidance for families feeding expressed human milk and impact best practices for feeding premature infants and milk banking protocols.

The University of Rochester will collaborate with a sub-grantee, New York University School of Medicine, on aspects of this 5-year project, which began in July 2024.