Fall 2008

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Giving Babies A Healthy Start

Deb Diersen-Schade returned to the ISU campus this fall to present at a symposium in honor of Norman Jacobson, an emeritus Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Life Sciences, who served as her major professor in animal science. She has made groundbreaking contributions to infant nutrition worldwide.

The research of Deborah Diersen-Schade has made a significant impact on families and how they meet the health and nutritional needs of babies.

For the past 22 years, Diersen-Schade ('78 animal science, MS '81 and PhD '84 nutritional physiology) has led Mead Johnson Nutritionals' research on lipid nutrition of infants. Her work has led to what some experts describe as the most significant innovation in infant formula in several decades and earned her the admiration and respect of nutritionists and scientists worldwide.

"My colleagues and I have a passion for giving infants and children the best possible start in life," she says. "We just feel so good about what we're doing."

The farm girl from Sac City, Iowa, says it was her early interest in horses that brought her to Iowa State. As she neared the end of her freshman undergraduate year, she realized she wasn't going to be a horse trainer, but was interested in learning more about animal nutrition.

"If not for the well-rounded education and mentoring of Dr. (Norman) Jacobson I received at Iowa State, this wonderful area of nutrition research would never have opened up for me the way it has," Diersen-Schade says. "It was my strong grounding in science that paid off in industry."

After receiving her advanced degrees from Iowa State in nutritional physiology and doing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Hormel Institute, Diersen-Schade joined Mead Johnson Nutritionals. She is now the director of global scientific affairs and holds the company's highest scientific distinction, that of research fellow, which is equivalent to distinguished professor in the academic world.

Diersen-Schade has applied the groundbreaking work on the impact of omega-3 fatty acids in brain and eye development by other leading nutrition scientists, including fellow Iowa State alumna Susan Carlson (PhD '75 nutrition) on infant nutrition and development.

The results have helped Mead Johnson, maker of Enfamil infant formulas, to become the first company to obtain Food and Drug Administration allowance to market infant formulas with added long-chain polyunsaturated acids (DHA and ARA). And, more importantly, provided advancements in infant nutrition that have worldwide benefit in improving infant health and development.

"The presence of these fatty acids improves pre-term and promotes normal term infant growth, vision and cognition with no adverse effects," Diersen-Schade says. "Today DHA and ARA-supplemented formulas represent the vast majority of the U.S. infant formula market and have been fed to millions of infants worldwide."

She continues her research using human breast milk as the "gold standard" for the infant diet. Mead Johnson is currently investigating new ways to improve nutrient intake in hopes of learning more about the impact of early nutrition on later growth, disease, obesity and possibly autism.

"There is a lot of recent focus on probiotics like those found in yogurts. We believe the best use is in specialty formulas for infants with allergies. There is also a lot of interest in fine-tuning other nutrients in formula such as carotenoids, vitamin D and cholesterol."

Diersen-Schade is co-inventor on five patent applications and has more than 50 peer-reviewed publications to her credit. She received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the ISU Alumni Association in 2006 in recognition of her outstanding professional achievements.

As a mom to two sons with the oldest, Andrew, now a college student, she finds herself concerned with the quality of dorm food as well as infant formula. She, her husband James and their youngest son Michael reside in Evansville, Ind.