COVID-19 Research

This is an URGENT call to support our work on COVID-19 (corona virus)!

Human milk can be a vector for viral transmission through breastfeeding, but also contains several anti-viral components that block viral diseases. At this point, we have very limited data on how breastfeeding and human milk bioactives impact COVID-19, but we need to find out immediately to help stop this pandemic. 

Together with several other labs and centers at UC San Diego and groups from around the world we work to answer the following questions:

• Is the virus transmitted through breastfeeding? - UNLIKELY! - (visit our research updates)
  
• Can human milk protect infants from COVID-19?
  
• Can we identify human milk bioactives that protect from the virus and leverage that knowledge to develop novel antiviral therapeutics?
  
• Are COVID vaccines transmitted through breastfeeding?
  
• Are the COVID vaccine-trigger antibodies transmitted through breastfeeding and protect infants from COVID-19?
  

Even when the COVID-19 pandemic is finally over, we need to build an infrastructure that can answer these questions right away before the next virus emerges, which it will!