Kasiakready
@kasiakready
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Building lactation biologics to make more milk. she/her
Joined December 2021
Want more milk?. Watch this video created by the @wyssinstitute detailing my work on enhancing lactation with Prolactin-XL.
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14/14 We hope Prolactin-XL can be an everyday bolster for breastfeeding and stockpiled for emergency situations, like vaccines. Doing so would make our fragile infant feeding systems more resilient which is imperative for advancing health equity worldwide.
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13/14 There is universal consensus amongst scientists, clinicians, major health organizations, national governments, and the infant formula industry to protect and promote everyday breastfeeding.
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12/14 These emergencies disproportionally impact marginalized communities globally. They have borne most of the intersecting burdens of climate change, systemic and structural racism, racial healthcare disparities, and inadequate lactation support.
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11/14 As climate disasters are intensifying in scale, frequency and intensity, breastfeeding becomes even more life-and-death for vulnerable infants in emergencies.
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10/14 Breastfeeding is also crucial for protecting vulnerable infants when there is no electricity, no safe water, disrupted supply chains, or infant formula shortages, contaminations, or recalls.
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9/14 Breastfeeding is the biological norm and standard of care for every day infant nutrition worldwide. Breastfeeding touches the lives of everyone on the planet is some way. Breastfeeding care-work builds people, families, friendships, and communities.
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8/14 We also show that in mice moms with uncomplicated lactation, Prolactin-XL-enhanced lactation is accompanied by reversible, lactocyte-driven changes in mammary gland morphology. Lactocytes are the milk-making cells.
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7/14 Pups fed by milk-insufficient moms (BR) were pathologically underweight, and all pups were sacrificed. By contrast, 53% of pups survive until weaning when their milk-insufficient moms receive repeated high doses of Prolactin-XL.
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6/14 Prolactin-XL increases milk production and restores growth of mice pups fed by mice moms with drug-induced lactation insufficiency (BR). Pups only drink milk. If the moms aren't making milk the pups don't grow, and they are sacrificed when they get too small.
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5/14 Our Prolactin-XL has a serum half-life of 70.9h in mice, 2,625-fold longer than endogenously active prolactin alone (70.9h v. 0.027h).
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4/14 The issue with using Prolactin by itself is that it is too small and is quickly eliminated from the body by the kidneys. Prolactin-XL is too large to be eliminated by the kidneys.
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3/14 Prolactin-XL, short for Prolactin-eXtra Long-acting , is comprised of prolactin fused to an engineered human IgG Fc domain designed to overcome the unique drug development challenges specific to the lactating person-infant dyad.
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2/14 Big thanks to @kailyndoiron , Katherine Redfield Chan, Jeff Way, @QuinceyJustman, @CEPoweMD, Pam Silver, and @wyssinstitute for all your hard work and support!.
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New preprint out!. Babies are born to breastfeed. While 50% of lactating persons struggle to make enough milk, there are no FDA-approved drugs to enhance lactation. We engineered a long-acting prolactin, Prolactin-XL, .to enhance milk production. 1/14
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