#197: Laura Katz & Pamela Besada-Lombana - Helaina's effera® Lactoferrin Growth Story

Dec 23, 2025

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Welcome back to Episode #197 of the PricePlow Podcast, where we take you inside Helaina’s Manhattan research and development facility for an in-depth conversation with CEO Laura Katz and Pamela Besada-Lombana (Pam), Director of Early R&D. After our initial online episode with Laura back in June, we traveled to New York to experience firsthand the groundbreaking precision fermentation work happening in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. This episode reveals the sophisticated science, collaborative culture, and clinical validation driving efferaÂ® lactoferrin from a novel ingredient to an industry-changing reality.

In this conversation, Pam takes us deep into the yeast engineering process that makes effera possible, explaining how her team designs, builds, and optimizes microbial factories to produce human-equivalent lactoferrin more efficiently with each iteration. Laura shares recent clinical breakthroughs, including the landmark alloimmunization study that proved effera triggers no immune response while bovine lactoferrin does, along with emerging data on gut permeability and microbiome health. The discussion also explores Helaina’s empathy-driven culture, their data infrastructure capturing 170 million rows of metabolic information, and how they’re attracting innovative brands that value genuine science and transparency. This episode complements our earlier conversation with Helaina’s Dan DeMarino and Anthony Clark from the same New York trip.

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https://blog.priceplow.com/podcast/helaina-laura-katz-pamela-lombana-197

Video: Inside Helaina’s Manhattan Lab with Laura Katz and Pam Besada-Lombana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LWUrgTkF98

Detailed Show Notes: The Science and Strategy Behind efferaÂ® Lactoferrin

(0:00) – Welcome to Helaina’s Manhattan Research Facility
(2:00) – Pam’s Background in Yeast Engineering
(3:30) – The Product Stays the Same, Production Gets Better
(5:30) – Reprogramming Yeast: Fighting 5,000 Genes
(8:00) – Understanding Non-Conventional Yeast Metabolism
(14:30) – Scaling the Innovation: 300 Edits Every Five Weeks
(18:00) – Capturing 170 Million Rows of Data
(19:00) – The Design-Build-Assess-Learn Cycle
(23:00) – From Small-Scale Screening to Commercial Production
(28:00) – A Decade of Precision Fermentation Expertise
(32:00) – Pam’s Journey to Helaina
(36:40) – Recent Clinical Data and Product Launches
(37:40) – Empathy as a Core Value
(40:00) – The Story Behind Helaina’s Wall of Women
(41:00) – The Landmark Alloimmunization Study
(44:00) – The Friday Evening Result
(45:00) – Taking the Risk on Comparative Clinical Research
(46:00) – Lab Space Constraints and Mindful Growth
(47:45) – Building the Data Science Team
(50:10) – AI-Assisted Hypothesis Generation
(50:50) – The Data Behind the Platform
(51:50) – Explaining Lactoferrin to a Friend
(53:00) – The Ethics of Bovine Colostrum
(54:00) – Closing:…