Industrial Scale Production and Characterization of a Whey Fraction Enriched in Extracellular Vesicle Material

ABSTRACT Human milk serves the sole nutritional role for the developing infant. During lactation, nano‐sized extracellular vesicles (EVs) in milk containing a multitude of biologically active components are transferred from mother to offspring. Infant formula (IF) based on cow milk‐derived ingredien...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Søren Roi Midtgaard, Maria Stenum Hansen, Nikolaj Drachmann, Xiaolu Geng, Kristine Ingrid Marie Blans, Manja Mahmens Fabricius Møbjerg, Anny F. Frølund, Jan Trige Rasmussen, Marie Stampe Ostenfeld
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2025-05-01
Series:Journal of Extracellular Biology
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1002/jex2.70044
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:ABSTRACT Human milk serves the sole nutritional role for the developing infant. During lactation, nano‐sized extracellular vesicles (EVs) in milk containing a multitude of biologically active components are transferred from mother to offspring. Infant formula (IF) based on cow milk‐derived ingredients has been reported to contain reduced levels of EVs as compared to human milk. There is therefore an unmet need to produce large‐scale volumes of milk EVs to improve IF composition. Here, we report a scalable industrial production protocol for a bovine whey‐derived ingredient that is highly enriched in EV material using a large‐scale sequential ceramic membrane filtration setup. Furthermore, we demonstrate a robust and generally applicable analytical approach to determine the relative contributions of EVs and milk fat globule membrane (MFGM) using molar ratios of the membrane‐bound proteins butyrophilin (BTN) and CD9 as surrogate markers for MFGM and EVs, respectively. Taken together, our findings provide a basis for comparing bovine milk‐containing foods and aid in developing specialized ingredients that can minimize the compositional difference between infant formula and human milk.
ISSN:2768-2811