Helaina CEO Laura Katz on creating a breast milk-equivalent baby formula, building a lab in Manhattan, and venture capital’s glass ceiling

At just 12 years old, Laura Katz looked up at her parents and announced to them her raison d’être: she wanted to feed people.

It’s a purpose she’s committed to since. Before her 30th birthday, the Toronto-born, N.Y.C.-based CEO had developed food products for the likes of NUGGS and Dylan’s Candy Bar, become an adjunct professor of food science and technology at New York University, and launched Helaina — a biotechnology company developing what it calls the world’s first “nature-identical infant milk.”

The timing is impeccable. Baby formula shortages in Canada and the U.S. have left millions of families without a safe, reliable source of food for their infants. In May, shortages south of the border were so bad that a C-17 — a military supply jet capable of carrying tanks — had to airlift 35 tonnes of baby formula into the country from Germany.

Despite the recent headlines, baby formula has been on Katz’s radar for years. Her “aha” moment for Helaina came at 23, when she learned about parents buying breast milk off the internet.

“There’s got to be a better solution,” she recalls thinking. “There has to be a product we can bring parents that brings the properties of breast milk that they’re seeking in a consumer product.”

Katz spoke to the Star in late June at Toronto’s Collision tech conference:

I read that you were entering Food Network competitions at 14 …

Food Network Canada. They used to do these online competitions. I won a couple of cookbooks out of them. I was such a food nerd.

So how did you go from that, at 14, to a 23-year-old who decided to start a formula company?

I was always obsessed with food. I was at my parents’ house last night in Toronto, and I found these business cards that said: ‘Laura Katz — Catering/Food Scientist in Training.’ I was always like that. I wanted to do something in food.

After college, I started working in food businesses making food products, and I saw all of this innovation going into alt-dairy and alt-meat. That’s when I had this “aha” moment about the formula industry. I felt really compelled to build a company that would empower parents. And the idea of bringing women’s health to the forefront of food is particularly important to me. It’s not something you can really do with a lot of other food products.

Earlier this year, there was a plethora of baby formula shortage coverage, but it has since gone away. Does the problem still exist?

I think mainstream media coverage is going away, but the problems persist. It really stemmed from a recall at a facility where there was a contamination issue. This shed light on the bigger macro issue we’re seeing in the market — there are a couple of players who dominate the entire industry. When one of their facilities shuts down, we have a really big shortage. That’s also fuelled by supply chain issues and sourcing certain materials.

So it is still very much an issue. We don’t have products that we can actually sell yet — it takes years to develop and move through the regulatory process. But we’re excited to be working toward a future in which we can really address the root of this issue.

Does Canada import all of its infant formulas?

No, but I believe some of it is imported from that one facility in Michigan. A lot of the major companies in Canada that provide infant formula are the same as in the U.S. It’s big business, especially for something as essential as infant formula. Seventy-five per cent or more of babies in the U.S. are reliant on baby formula in that first six months of life. That’s all they eat. To not have a steady supply that parents can feel confident about is really worrisome.

Putting aside the shortages for a second: Why is there such an obsession with breast milk?

Breast milk is complex. It’s got a lot of different components that haven’t even been identified yet. There are certain parts of it that are really well understood, but it has a lot of different antibodies and growth factors and proteins that aren’t conventionally found in infant formula. These components help babies’ gut health, immune systems and their cognitive health. Parents who are seeking these types of properties will turn to breastfeeding if they can.

Infant formula is a good option. It’s important. But there is still a big gap to bridge between the two products in terms of humanizing infant formula. That’s really what we’re doing: looking for the most valuable components of breast milk that we don’t find in formula and recreating them, so parents feel empowered by this product — as opposed to feeling shame or guilt over not being able to provide breast milk. At the end of the day, babies just need to get fed.

My understanding is Helaina uses a yeast to produce breast milk. I only took biology until Grade 11. Do you mind walking me through how your process works?

Yeast is really cool. We’ve been using yeast for thousands of years to make bread and beer. What’s unique now is that we have the tools to program yeast, which allows us to tell yeast to make something really specific. With beer, you give it sugar, and the yeast is making alcohol. At Helaina, we program the yeast so when we give it sugar and nutrients, it’s making proteins found in breast milk. Then we collect the proteins into a dry powder ingredient, we upcycle our yeast, and we’re left with proteins that are identical to what’s found in breast milk.

It’s technology that much of the food industry is leveraging right now. Alternative dairy products and alternative meat products have been working with this type of precision fermentation, because regular fermentation is not so precise. I saw those industries really boom and thought: ‘Why aren’t we doing the same thing with infant formula?’

Why do you think that hasn’t been done before?

There are a lot of reasons. The commercialization process has really only been established in the last few years by these alt-meat and alt-dairy companies. Creating the infrastructure and regulatory processes for adult food, and not babies, was an important step to take first, I think. The tools we use for programming our yeast are also fairly new.

We work with something called CRISPR, which you’re probably familiar with. CRISPR has only become available to companies in the food industry over the last few years. It’s a tool that has helped us significantly. Ten years ago, no one would have been able to program yeast with it.

There’s been a lot of reporting on how venture capital is really hard to access for women-led startups — or startups just addressing women’s issues in general. How have you found it?

Just 2.1 per cent, I believe, is the percentage of female founders who get funding. It’s a completely different type of challenge. When we connect with investors, a lot of them say to us: ‘We wish this product existed when we had children.’ For us, that’s been a way into really starting these conversations. It’s helped a lot with fundraising.

Fundraising is never easy, and I don’t like to pretend it is to people who are trying, but we’ve been really fortunate with the types of people we’ve brought in. We have a lot of really strong backers, but also people who care about the mission. That has set us up for success from the beginning. One of my mentors, who was also one of the first investors in Helaina, has been introducing me to people in every single funding round, at every single opportunity. It’s those types of people who help you get where you need to go.

How does Helaina avoid supply chain problems that traditional formula can face? Because it sounds like a very complex product.

Very complex. There are so many things that go into formula. Using fermentation is a complete game-changer. With conventional infant formula, you’re relying on regular agricultural inputs. When you use fermentation, you start to control the supply chain yourself, because you’re making that raw material going into your product. You’re not relying on corn syrup. You take the yeast, you train, and you produce the end product, and that really helps to advance your supply chain control.

It’s never going to be perfect. There are always going to be challenges that we face — that any food businesses are going to face — but fermentation will empower us to make the components that go into the formula in a much more controlled environment.

Do you see yourself more as a scientist, or an entrepreneur?

That’s a tough question. I don’t know that I see myself as one or the other. Maybe both? I have a science background, but I was never going to be the person who would be a bench scientist. I need to be involved in so many different types of things. I think that’s what keeps me going.

The idea of entrepreneurship, to me, is just being able to do everything, which is what I really like — building a lab, dealing with real estate developers, working with manufacturers and engineers. Having a scientific background really grounds Helaina in reality, I think, and what’s possible for the business and for the technology we’re building.

Tell me about the lab.

It’s awesome. We’ve been working on it for a year and a half. It’s right in the middle of Manhattan, in the Flatiron District. I don’t know if you’re familiar with New York City.

I know enough about New York City to know that is not generally the place one puts a lab.

The goal with building this lab is to bring life sciences to the centre of everything. Labs get a reputation for being in a basement, in a corner, in a part of the city that is hard to get to. It’s all windowed. The actual lab is right in the centre of all of our offices. We’ve got a lot of great equipment that will enable us to expand our research and development capabilities. We’ve got a tasting room so people can come in, eventually — not quite yet.

We’re just getting settled there and the team is super excited. It’s a really good feeling to have a space where people feel really good about the work they’re doing.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Brennan Doherty is a former staff reporter for Star Calgary and the Star’s 24-hour radio room in Toronto. He is now a freelance contributor.

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