Study shows vat pasteurization outperforms other methods in preserving human milk’s native bioactive properties

DUARTE, Calif., February 11, 2025 – Prolacta Bioscience^®, the world's leading hospital provider of 100% human milk-based nutritional products for critically ill and premature infants, announced today that the journal Foods has published a study demonstrating that vat pasteurization preserves most native characteristics of unprocessed human milk fat globules (MFG), compared to other processing methods for donor human milk.

MFG comprises 98% of the fat in human milk. Human milk fat and fatty acids provide most of an infant’s energy intake necessary for growth and development.¹ The milk fat globule membrane provides antimicrobial protection² and plays a role in shaping the gut microbiome³ to support healthy development of the infant’s immune system.⁴

The study, “Investigating Milk Fat Globule Structure, Size, and Functionality After Thermal Processing and Homogenization of Human Milk,” compared the effects of vat pasteurization (Vat-PT), retort sterilization (RTR), and ultra-high-temperature (UHT) processing, with and without homogenization, on human milk fat.⁵ The authors used these three methods with pilotscale equipment to mimic industrial conditions to process and study 250 liters of human milk, using raw human milk as the control.

“Our findings provide an increased understanding of how current processing methods affect human MFG, which is critical for optimizing processing conditions to preserve human milk bioactivity,” said the study’s lead author, Gulustan Ozturk, Ph.D., who was at the University of California, Davis when the study was performed and is now assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Key highlights from this study:

• Vat-PT and RTR processing resulted in similar-sized MFG as unprocessed human milk while UHT processing resulted in smaller MFG diameter.
• The RTR treatment completely inactivated xanthine oxidase activity, a marker of MFG bioactivity, while UHT reduced its activity by 93%.
• In contrast, Vat-PT retained 28% of xanthine oxidase activity. Prolacta’s human milk-based nutritional products are vat pasteurized using time and temperature specifications defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure pathogen inactivation and the highest level of safety while retaining as much of the natural bioactivity of the milk as possible.⁶ Bioactivity is thought to support infants’ immunity, development, growth, and long-term health.⁴

“This study builds on previous research showing that Prolacta’s vat pasteurized human milk-based nutritional products maintain higher bioactivity compared to fortifiers with other processing methods,” said Melinda Elliott, MD, FAAP, chief medical officer at Prolacta. “Prolacta’s fortifiers containing bioactive components have demonstrated a reduction in the risk of serious complications, including necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC).”⁷

About Human Milk-Based Products

Human milk-based products differ from cow milk-based products primarily in their composition — notably, the bioactive components that are unique to human milk. These include immunoglobulins, lactoferrin, milk fat globule membrane, and the wide spectrum of prebiotics known as human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), which are not easily manufactured and thus are greatly decreased or missing from cow milk-based nutritional products.⁸ Prolacta’s human milk-based nutritional products offer the highest bioactivity in the human milk industry due to vat pasteurization, which retains more bioactivity compared to other processing methods like retort sterilization or ultra-high-temperature (UHT) processing, as supported by multiple studies.^5,9,10,11 Prolacta’s human milk-based fortifiers (HMBF) are clinically proven to reinstate and significantly boost bioactive proteins when added to mother’s own milk (MOM) and/or donor human milk (DHM).¹²

About Prolacta Bioscience

Prolacta Bioscience^® is a global life sciences company dedicated to Advancing the Science of Human Milk^® to improve health outcomes for critically ill and premature infants. More than 100,000 extremely premature infants worldwide¹³ have benefited from Prolacta's human milk-based products, which have been evaluated in more than 30 peer-reviewed clinical studies. Operating the world’s first pharmaceutical-grade human milk processing facilities, Prolacta maintains the industry’s strictest quality and safety standards, with over 20 validated tests for screening and testing human milk. Prolacta's manufacturing process uses vat pasteurization to ensure pathogen inactivation while protecting nutritional composition and bioactivity. Connect with us at X, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Media Contact:
Loren Kosmont
Lkosmont@prolacta.com
310.721.9444

References

1. Innis SM. Human milk: maternal dietary lipids and infant development. Proc Nutr Soc. 2007;66(3):397-404. doi:10.1017/S0029665107005666
2. Ozturk G, Shah IM, Mills DA, German JB, de Moura Bell JMLN. The antimicrobial activity of bovine milk xanthine oxidase. Int Dairy J. 2020;102:104581. doi:10.1016/j.idairyj.2019.104581
3. Garrido D, Nwosu C, Ruiz-Moyano S, et al. Endo-β-N-acetylglucosaminidases from infant gutassociated bifidobacteria release complex N-glycans from human milk glycoproteins. Mol Cell Proteom. 2012;11(9):775–785.
4. Gila-Diaz A, Arribas SM, Algara A, et al. A review of bioactive factors in human breastmilk: a focus on prematurity. Nutrients. 2019;11(6):1307. doi:10.3390/nu11061307
5. Ozturk G, Paviani B, Rai R, et al. Investigating milk fat globule structure, size, and functionality after thermal processing and homogenization of human milk. Foods. 2024;13(8):1242. doi:10.3390/foods13081242
6. Data on file.
7. Hair AB, Peluso AM, Hawthorne KM, et al. Beyond necrotizing enterocolitis prevention: improving outcomes with an exclusive human milk-based diet [published correction appears in Breastfeed Med. 2017;12(10):663]. Breastfeed Med. 2016;11(2):70-74. doi:10.1089/bfm.2015.0134
8. Ballard O, Morrow AL. Human milk composition: nutrients and bioactive factors. Pediatr Clin North Am. 2013;60(1):49-74. doi:10.1016/j.pcl.2012.10.002 PMID: 23178060; PMCID: PMC3586783
9. Liang N, Koh J, Kim BJ, et al. Structural and functional changes of bioactive proteins in donor human milk treated by vat-pasteurization, retort sterilization, ultra-high-temperature sterilization, freezethawing and homogenization. Front Nutr. Published online September 15, 2022. doi:10.3389/fnut.2022.926814
10. Meredith-Dennis L, Xu G, Goonatilleke E, Lebrilla CB, Underwood MA, Smilowitz JT. Composition and variation of macronutrients, immune proteins, and human milk oligosaccharides in human milk from nonprofit and commercial milk banks. J Hum Lact. 2018;34(1):120-129. doi:10.1177/0890334417710635
11. Lima HK, Wagner-Gillespie M, Perrin MT, Fogleman AD. Bacteria and bioactivity in Holder pasteurized and shelf-stable human milk products. Curr Dev Nutr. 2017;1(8):e001438. doi:10.3945/cdn.117.001438
12. Philip RK, Romeih E, Bailie E, et al. Exclusive human milk diet for extremely premature infants: a novel fortification strategy that enhances the bioactive properties of fresh, frozen, and pasteurized milk specimens. Breastfeed Med. 2023;18(4):279-290. doi:10.1089/bfm.2022.0254
13. Data on file; estimated number of premature infants fed Prolacta’s products from January 2007 to August 2023