Innovative Partnerships: Exploring the Future of HMOs with UC San Diego and Novonesis

Professor Bode, holding the Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation Chair of Collaborative Human Milk Research, is a pioneer in HMO research with almost 25 years of experience and more than 180 peer-reviewed publications in high impact journals. Professor Bode joined UC San Diego in 2009, founded the Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation Mother-Milk-Infant Center of Research Excellence (LRF MOMI CORE) in 2017, and the Human Milk Institute (HMI) in 2022. Moreover, Professor Bode is an esteemed conference organizer and collaboration facilitator, who – together with Novonesis - created the Research Incubator on HMOs and Synbiotics at HMI.

Stina Rikke Jensen, Ph.D. is Head of Applied HMOs team in Novonesis. She has a great passion for the biology of the gastrointestinal tract and has worked for > 10 years as a scientist focusing on human diseases (inflammatory bowel diseases and diabetes), animal health and recently infant health. She has worked in both the pharmaceutical- and biotechnological industry and joined the company in 2021 where she now is leading a team of highly skilled scientists and technicians working on generating scientific data substantiating the effects of Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs). After many years as a scientist in industry she has gained thorough knowledge of the translational potential of scientific data and has established collaboration platforms with several academic institutions to ensure technological progression.

Dr. Yannik Schönknecht is a senior scientific advisor at Novonesis HMOs, specializing in clinical and pre-clinical research on the health effects of HMOs. With a background in Nutritional Physiology and a PhD. from the University of Bonn, he has also worked in medical communication, focusing on the role of human milk bioactives in infant nourishment. His work emphasizes developing scientific evidence for the role of HMOs in early life and translating this evidence into applications.