Publication | September 29, 2025
Protocol: the International Milk Composition (IMiC) Consortium – a harmonized secondary analysis of human milk from four studies
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Read the PaperHuman milk is the primary source of nutrition for infants, integral in supporting growth, immunity, and development. This new study undertaken by the International Milk Composition (IMiC) Consortium seeks to better understand the sources and consequences of variation in human milk composition across populations using an integrative multi-omics approach, including untargeted metabolomics, to inform novel strategies for maternal, newborn, and infant nutritional recommendations.
Sapient is proud to support IMiC’s critical research and to have contributed to the protocol paper published in Frontiers in Nutrition describing the methods for harmonized analysis of human milk from multiple mother-infant health studies across low, middle and high-resource settings.
The protocol includes untargeted metabolomics analysis using Sapient’s rLC-MS workflows to explore metabolites with known and unknown identities that may contribute to infant growth, immunity, and development. This data will be integrated with other measures of macronutrients, minerals, B-vitamins, fat-soluble vitamins, human milk oligosaccharides, selected bioactive proteins, proteins, and bacteria to characterize fixed and modifiable determinants of human milk variability and to identify human milk components that are linked to infant growth.
Multi-modal machine learning methods will be applied to predict infant growth and identify key determinants of human milk variation. This work seeks to inform novel strategies for maternal, newborn, and infant nutritional recommendations and interventions, and demonstrates the power of cross-disciplinary collaboration to inform global health strategies.
To learn more, read the full protocol.