Search for a cure drives Food Allergy Fund conference

Key takeaways:

• Researchers, entrepreneurs, clinicians and other stakeholders from multiple specialties are welcome.
• Attendees can meet the curated guests from the Research Retreat during the Signature Research Evening.

“My goal is to go out of business and find a cure for my daughter and for everyone else living with food allergies,” Ilana Golant, JD, told Healio.

Golant is the founder and CEO of the Food Allergy Fund (FAF), which is hosting its FAF Research Retreat and its Annual Innovation & Investment Summit from April 28 to 30.

Academics, clinical practitioners and entrepreneurs across multiple specialties will gather to present research and discuss what is next in treatment.

“It’s a really great lineup of top researchers,” Golant said.

A personal mission

Golant, an attorney with experience in media public relations, launched FAF 5 years ago.

“I have a daughter with multiple anaphylactic food allergies, and that was my introduction,” Golant said. “I was very frustrated by the lack of answers on what is causing the disease and also the lack of treatment options.”

FAF is focused on funding cutting-edge research for pediatric and adult populations with food allergy, particularly those with multiple food allergies.

“Everything that we fund should be broadly applicable, because the majority of patients now are allergic to multiple foods,” Golant said. “We’re really seeing promising results in our research.”

For example, FAF has supported research led by Boston Children’s Hospital into fecal transplants for food allergy that is now ready for a multisite clinical trial.

“We are big believers in the gut microbiome being a really important key, not only to food allergy, but to chronic disease generally for kids and adults,” Golant said. “We have funded multiple projects in the gut microbiome space.”

Also, FAF has funded a study of synbiotic therapy at the University of Chicago and a gut barrier integrity project at Northwestern University.

“The work in the gut space has been underfunded for many years,” Golant said, adding that the gut microbiome impacts inflammation and chronic disease beyond food allergy. “How do we unlock the gut, and what will that tell us?”

FAF also has supported research into repurposing drugs.

“We know that these drugs are already safe, so we can really focus on efficacy,” Golant said. “Most of the time they’re generic, so they’re cheaper and can get into patients’ hands more quickly.”

Golant said that FAF takes “a portfolio approach” to the research it supports.

“Some research will be great, and some will fail. That’s the beauty of science,” she said. “We really want to cast a wide, curated, strategic net in terms of what we fund, and we have an incredible scientific advisory board that helps vet all of the research that we fund.”

The organization also aims to accelerate innovation among early-stage companies, Golant continued, with 30 companies representing therapeutics, consumer technology, wearable devices, and other products and services attending previous summits.

“We really offer them a platform for them to showcase their work,” Golant said. “Our goal is really to not only fund the research and build up the research ecosystem, but also support innovation in the early-stage company community.”

A brainstorming session

The inaugural two-day Research Retreat on April 28 and 29 will assemble researchers and business leaders “in a very collaborative, brainstorming, action-oriented setting,” Golant said.

“I naively thought that the top researchers in the world must get together, somewhere, without us, brainstorming,” Golant said.

During last year’s American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting, FAF hosted a 90-minute luncheon for researchers.

“The researchers stayed for 4 hours, and they were so excited to have a forum in which they could really just talk to each other and exchange learning and findings,” Golant said. “They want to collaborate.”

The retreat’s goal is to create a robust environment for collaboration that’s not unlike an escape room, she joked.

“The researchers can’t leave until we come up with collaborative, actionable projects that we will fund,” Golant said. “That’s our commitment to them, and their commitment to us is to bring their best and brightest thinking.”

FAF spent 6 months developing a curated list of invitees to ensure diverse perspectives from various but complementary disciplines representing multiple institutions.

“We’re really excited,” Golant said. “We think a lot of magic will come out of it.”

On April 29, members of the public can network with the participants from the retreat and learn about what was discussed there during the Signature Research Evening, which will be held at the headquarters of Cure, New York City’s first life sciences innovation campus.

The Annual Summit

The Annual Summit at the Paley Center for Media on April 30 is an open event.

“We really think of it as a thought leadership gathering that brings together all these stakeholders — doctors, scientists, patients, advocates, investors, media, government officials and everyone else — all in the room at the same time,” Golant said.

The agenda will include highlights from the Research Retreat, moderated by Jeffrey A. Hubbell, PhD, of the Grossman School of Medicine at New York University.

“What are the technologies that are going to shape the future of food allergies?” Golant said. “Very futuristic, forward-looking in nature.”

During a session on “Visionaries in Research: Shaping the Future of Food Allergies,” Yoni Savir, PhD, of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, will discuss an AI-driven predictive model of oral food challenges.

“Diagnostics in food allergy is so antiquated and unreliable,” Golant said. “This is the first ever use of AI and computational biology to start to build a predictive model of if and how a food challenge will succeed.”

This model also may predict whether children need to complete OFCs, how foods should be sequenced and what the anticipated outcomes may be, Golant continued.

The Summit additionally will feature Susan Lynch, PhD, of University of California, San Francisco, who is doing “really cutting-edge work in looking at everything from birth cohorts to infant gut microbiome to various early interventions,” Golant said.

During the session on “Game-Changing Devices,” Huw Davies, PhD, of Owlstone Medical, will discuss his company’s breath biopsy technology.

“You put on an oxygen mask type of device. You breathe into it, and it measures the health of your gut — the gasses and particles that are there, the breath-omics,” Golant said. “It actually provides a longer view of one’s gut than a fecal sample or blood work.”

The session also will feature John Fraser, MBChB, PhD, of De Motu Cordis Pty Ltd, discussing his company’s inhalable epinephrine.

“Everyone continues to be scared of the needle,” Golant said. “This is an inhaler, the way that you would use an inhaler for asthma.”

The CEOs from Harmony Baby Nutrition, Persephone Biosciences and Siolta Therapeutics will lead the session on “Microbiome Exposure & Implications,” with a focus on how modulations to the gut microbiome during early childhood can have lifelong benefits for food allergy and overall health, Golant said.

A second session on “Visionaries in Research” will spotlight studies from teams supported by FAF, including Cathryn R. Nagler, PhD, of the University of Chicago and Christopher M. Warren, PhD, of Northwestern University.

Nagler’s work represents “groundbreaking work around synbiotic therapy for food allergy,” Golant said, and Warren will discuss comorbidities related to food allergy.

“The days of the peanut-allergic kid are long gone,” Golant said, adding that it has been some time since she has met someone with just one allergy. “It was multiple allergies, and then it became multiple allergic diseases, and then it’s multiple diseases.”

Warren’s talk will include eosinophilic esophagitis and food protein-induced enterocolitis syndrome as they pertain to food allergy.

“We see it anecdotally, but we really wanted the data and the science to be able to tell that story,” Golant said.

Additional sessions will include “Immuno-Modulators: Driving the Future of Immune System Therapy” and “The Complex Connection: Mast Cell Activation & Food Allergies,” which is the first time that the summit has had a panel that addresses mast cells.

“That was really driven by what we were seeing in terms of social media chatter, because parents are on the front lines of living and managing food allergy on a daily basis,” Golant said.

“Over the last year, we saw a fever pitch around parents trying to figure out what is the role that mast cells play in food allergy and in other seemingly disconnected health conditions,” she continued. “There’s this really interesting connection that has been increasingly coming to the foreground.”

What’s next

Golant said that FAF’s mission extends beyond the summit.

“We have a wide range of projects that we’re funding across disciplines, across institutions,” she said. “We’ll be announcing two new projects at the summit, and then multiple additional projects in the second half of this year.”

FAF also is planning programming in Washington, D.C., for this fall that will focus on public policy pertaining to food allergy and how it connects with chronic disease, along with other events adjacent to organized allergy meetings.

“We have all the opinion leaders in one place, and then convening them in smaller settings, so it’s not 10,000 people, but in smaller settings for really targeted discussion and collaboration,” Golant said.

More information about the summit is available online.

Reference:

• Food Allergy Fund presents Annual Innovation and Investment Summit: New York City, April 30, 2025. https://foodallergyfund.org/april-2025. Accessed April 4, 2025.

For more information:

Ilana Golant, JD, can be reached at ilana.golant@foodallergyfund.org.