 MSc student, Rilwan Azeez, created an animated short film to capture his passion for human milk science. This video was created to promote National Breastfeeding Week and is a great visualization for why human milk science is important. Great job using your skills and talents to communicate the wonders of breastmilk, Rilwan!
  Dr. Meghan Azad contributed to a newly-published evidence scan describing the nutrient content and milk volume consumed by infants to help inform reference standards for infant nutrition intake. The report was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.D. Department of Health and Human Services for the National Academies of Science. This report uncovers the importance of researching the complexity of human milk to optimize infant health and will be used to help improve policies and infant nutrition guidelines. See the Twitter Tutorial here.
  National Breastfeeding Week (NBW) is celebrated in Canada from October 1-7, 2020 as a way to support and promote breastfeeding. Azad Lab members celebrated NBW by sharing what breastfeeding and human milk research means to them in short videos. Video participants listed in order of appearance.
  Dr. Azad presented CHILD research at two virtual conferences this week: The International Milk Genomics Consortium virtual symposium and the Microbiome Movement Maternal & Infant Health Summit. The presentations focused on the milk, nose and gut bacteria collected from CHILD study samples and how these different bacteria can help shape infant health. It is amazing what we are discovering about bacteria from the rich data available in the CHILD cohort!
 Sarah Turner, PhD candidate, received honorable mention in the PhD category for her poster abstract entitled “Infant feeding, human milk components and child behavior at age 5 years: Preliminary results from the longitudinal CHILD Cohort Study” at Child Health Research Days. At this year’s virtual conference, all abstract authors gave five-minute short talks with accompanying slides on their research project.
 Although children often avoid the worst physical effects of the COVID-19 virus, what could be the long-term effects of the pandemic on child health, development and resilience? Dr. Meghan Azad will join Drs. Candice Odgers and Micheal Kobor in an upcoming CIFAR webinar to discuss the impacts of the pandemic on child health.
  Azad Lab PhD student Sarah Turner has received the ISRHML Trainee Expansion Program award to visit Dr. Amy Brown at Swansea University in Wales, UK. Sarah’s project will use qualitative interviews to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic lock-down has impacted breastfeeding experiences among Canadian and UK women. During her visit, Sarah will learn from Dr. Brown’s expertise with breastfeeding knowledge translation aimed at public and government audiences. Good luck with this project Sarah and congratulations on your award!
 Effective September 1, 2020, Dr. Kozeta Miliku, former post-doctoral fellow in the Azad Lab, is joining the CHILD National Coordinating Centre team at McMaster University as a Senior Research Fellow and CHILD Clinical Science Officer. Dr. Miliku’s new role will involve scientific liaising with research partners and developing the CHILD 12-year-visit protocol. Dr. Miliku has been an integral part of the Azad Lab since 2017, publishing two first-authored manuscripts on fatty acids and human milk oligosaccharides in the CHILD cohort. Congratulations and all the best with this new chapter of life, Kozeta!
It is exciting to see Azad Lab publications being downloaded and cited to support and fuel new research. Recent PhD Student, Dr. Shirin Moossavi’s paper was recognized as one of the most accessed and cited articles in Cell Host and Microbe in 2019. This article explores different maternal and early life factors influencing the human milk microbiota, finding a strong association with mode of feeding (i.e. pumped vs directly at the breast) and milk bacteria. This finding suggests that milk bacteria may originate in the infant mouth and sets the stage for future work on how milk microbiota influence infant health and development.
 Dr. Sarah Reyes was awarded a 2020 Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowship by Research Manitoba in partnership with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba for her project entitled “Human milk components and the nasal microbiota as causal factors in the prevention of wheezing and ear infections during the first year”. The Health Research Postdoctoral Fellowships support highly qualified postdoctoral trainees to prepare for careers as independent researchers and are awarded to exceptional trainees who significantly increase the productivity of the research program with which they are affiliated. Congratulations Sarah!
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October 2020
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