Color-reactive diagnostic for at-home breastmilk shelf-life testing

PumpKin is developing a diagnostic test kit that provides parents milk banks and milk bank recipients (individuals NICUs) with accurate and timely information about shelf-life condition after storage and nutritional value of breastmilk. The kit measures 1) propensity for fat breakdown (i.e. lipase levels) 2) fat breakdown/rancidity in stored human breast milk (i.e. glycerol levels) and 3) vitamin C content. For our technical objectives we will first establish the upper and lower bounds for acceptable and typical amounts of lipase glycerol and vitamin C in human breastmilk and their connections to nutrient content and frozen shelf-life. We will characterize breastmilk provided from a wide range of donors and across the fresh- to freeze/thawed life cycle of days to months. Next we will develop a suite of affordable at-home colorimetric diagnostic test strips to measure the amounts of lipase glycerol and vitamin C in breastmilk samples. Finally we will validate the accuracy of the developed test kits using breastmilk samples assayed using both our approach and gold-standard laboratory-grade measurement tools. Overall this work will provide parents milk banks and their individual and NICU recipients easy-to-use and inexpensive tools to assess the safety and nutritional value of their breast milk. This proposed work aligns with the Food Science and Nutrition Topic Area as it will improve the quality safety and nutritional value of human milk and reduce breastmilk waste while providing new insight into the physical chemical and biological properties of human milk.