Steering Committee

Phillip Anderson, PharmD, FCSHP, FASHP

Health Sciences Clinical Professor
University of California, San Diego

Dr. Anderson is a Health Sciences Clinical Professor of Pharmacy at the UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. He has lectured and published extensively on drug use during breastfeeding, including original research on drug excretion into human milk. Dr. Anderson founded the LactMed^® database, which is available in the National Library of Medicine’s Bookshelf. He continues to write most LactMed^® records and to expand the database. He also authored the medication appendix to the popular handbook, The Nursing Mothers’ Companion. Dr. Anderson is the Pharmacology Editor and a member of the Editorial Board of the professional journal, Breastfeeding Medicine, and writes a monthly column on medication use during breastfeeding for the journal. He has also been a consultant to the US Food and Drug Administration on the topic of drug labeling with respect to medication use during lactation.

Brookie Best, PharmD, MAS

Professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Pediatrics
Dean, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science
University of California, San Diego

Dr. Best specializes in pharmacokinetics (the processes by which a drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and eliminated by the body) and pediatric clinical pharmacology. Her research has focused on studying anti-HIV drugs in infants, children, adolescents, non-pregnant adults, and pregnant adults. She also studies drugs used to treat Kawasaki disease, the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children. She has specific interests and expertise in maternal-fetal clinical pharmacology, therapeutic drug monitoring of antiretrovirals, antiretroviral pharmacogenomics, and penetration of antiretrovirals into the central nervous system.

Lars Bode, PhD, MS

Professor of Pediatrics
Division of Neonatology and Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition
Chair of Collaborative Human Milk Research
Founding Director, Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation Mother-Milk-Infant Center of Research Excellence (MOMI CORE)
Founding Director, Human Milk Institute (HMI)
University of California, San Diego

Dr. Bode is Professor of Pediatrics and holds joint appointments in the Division of Neonatology and the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. His main research objectives are to elucidate (i) how human milk components are synthesized in the mother’s mammary gland, (ii) how milk composition is affected by external factors such as nutrition, pathogens, or medications, (iii) how milk components affect immediate as well as long-term health and development of infants and mothers, and (iv) how they can serve as natural templates for the development of preventatives, therapeutics, and diagnostics for people of all ages.

Dr. Bode has published over 140 peer-reviewed articles on human milk oligosaccharides. In 2020, he ranked in the top 2% of most cited scientists in the world in the category “Nutrition and Dietetics”.

Eyla Boies​, MD, FAAP

Professor of Clinical Pediatrics
University of California, San Diego

Dr. Boies is a board-certified pediatrician who has provided primary care for infants, children, and adolescents through all of their developmental stages. Her areas of clinical expertise include assisting parents who are experiencing difficulties breastfeeding their newborns and parental vaccine uncertainty, and her research interests include pediatric infectious diseases and premature infant nutrition. Dr. Boies established the Premature Infant Nutrition Clinic (PINC) at UC San Diego Health in 2008 and continues to serve as medical director. Recently discharged premature infants and their parents seen in PINC receive help with lactation and breastfeeding while assuring proper growth and nutrition.

David Boyle, BA

Co-Program Director, Mommy’s Milk Human Milk Biorepository
Professor, Division of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology, Department of Medicine
Co-Director, Translational Research Technology Division, Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute
University of California, San Diego

Mr. Boyle is an internationally recognized researcher in the development and application of biomarker analysis to clinical research. He has guided and transformed the Translational Research Technology (TRT) Division at the UC San Diego Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute into a one-stop shop of flexible laboratory-based services for translational studies. He has been instrumental in establishing the biorepository storage for the Mommy’s Milk samples and works closely with Dr. Chambers to lead the evaluation of best practices for collection, storage, and analysis of samples to inform biorepository methods for a number of similar repositories being established throughout the world.

Jae Kim, MD, PhD

Co-Director, Perinatal Institute, Cincinnati Children’s
Director, Division of Neonatology, Cincinnati Children’s
Professor, Department of Pediatrics
University of Cincinnati

Dr. Kim is a board-certified neonatologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He has long-standing research interests in newborn nutrition, with a particular focus on a mother’s breastmilk, and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a serious inflammatory condition in the gut that primarily affects premature infants. Prior to his position with Cincinnati Children’s, he spent over a decade at UC San Diego, where he co-founded the UC Health Milk Bank as well as the innovative, nationally recognized multidisciplinary program to advance premature infant nutrition called SPIN (Supporting Premature Infant Nutrition). Dr. Kim is the co-author of the book, Best Medicine: Human Milk in the NICU.

Victor Nizet, MD

Professor and Vice Chair of Basic Research, Department of Pediatrics
University of California, San Diego

Dr. Nizet is Chief of the Division of Host-Microbe Systems and Therapeutics, a unique Division in the UC San Diego Department of Pediatrics that brings together a diverse group of scientists and physicians for interdisciplinary research on the interactions of humans and the microbial world in both health and disease. Fundamental principles of microbiology, immunology, pharmacology, the “-OMICs” (genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and the human microbiome) and state-of-the-art systems biology are focused on the pathogenesis of common childhood infectious diseases and inflammatory disorders, to inspire innovative discovery programs and translational studies of new drugs and interventions that will restore optimal health in childhood and throughout life. Dr. Nizet’s interests lie in understanding the fundamental mechanisms of bacteria and the immune system, with a special focus on invasive and antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

Jason Sauberan, PharmD

Clinical Research Pharmacist
Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women and Newborns

Dr. Sauberan is an experienced Neonatal-Perinatal clinical pharmacist. He currently serves as a Clinical Research Pharmacist with the Neonatal Research Institute at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women and Newborns in San Diego, California. His main research and practice interests include drugs in human milk and pediatric infectious disease therapy, drug formulations, medication safety, and drug information. He is an assistant author of the National Library of Medicine’s LactMed^® database, co-editor of the AAP Nelson’s Guide to Pediatric Antimicrobial Therapy, and author of the neonatal-pediatric dosing tables in the AAP Red Book. He has spoken to numerous groups locally and nationally on medication use during lactation. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for MotherToBaby California, a teratogen information service for questions about exposures during pregnancy and lactation.

Lisa Stellwagen, MD, FAAP

Professor of Clinical Pediatrics
Medical Director and Co-founder, UC Health Milk Bank
Co-Director, UC San Diego Human Milk Institute
President, Human Milk Banking Association of North America

Dr. Stellwagen is a general academic pediatrician who specialized in newborn medicine for nearly 40 years, working in community clinic, private practice, and academic hospital settings. Her clinical areas of interest included infant nutrition, human milk feeding, and common medical issues in the newborn period, while her research interests included human milk quality and storage, maternal milk production, and promoting human milk feeding in both term and pre-term infants to improve infant outcomes. Her work in hospital-based quality improvement for human milk feeding of well and sick newborns at UC San Diego led to the concept of starting a milk bank. With a generous gift, she and fellow Mommy’s Milk Steering Committee member Dr. Jae Kim developed and launched the UC Health Milk Bank. Dr. Stellwagen is also the current President of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America and a co-director of the UC San Diego Human Milk Institute