Council formed to advance ‘innovative’ food allergy research, treatments

Uncovering the mysteries of food allergies and developing cutting-edge methods to treat them is the mission of the new scientific advisory council organized by the nonprofit Food Allergy Research & Education.

Consisting of a dozen experts from a range of disciplines, the council will “identify innovative approaches that can be applied to food allergy investigations,” helping to guide the nonprofit’s investments in clinical and preclinical research, according to a Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) press release.

“Food allergies have increased in epidemic proportion and continue to increase. Unlike COVID, it is a slow pandemic,” Martin J. Blaser, MD, council member and microbiologist, told Healio. “Now is the time to work on fighting it. If we don’t, next year will be worse.”

Martin J. Blaser

Blaser additionally said he is looking forward to exploring connections between the microbiome and food allergy amid “a growing realization that the microbes that we carry, especially as young children, play an important role in shaping immunity and resistance to allergy.”

The council includes subject matter experts in immunology, microbiology, gastroenterology, computer science and other fields. It also includes two members of Healio’s Allergy/Asthma Peer Perspective Board: Marc E. Rothenberg, MD, PhD, director of the division of allergy and immunology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and Ruchi S. Gupta, MD, MPH, professor of pediatrics and medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Wayne Shreffler, MD, PhD, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and faculty member at Harvard Medical School, told Healio he hopes his position on the council will allow him to encourage “highly rigorous research” on unmet needs he hears from daily interactions with patients.

Wayne Shreffler

“The formation of the scientific advisory council is the first time FARE has brought together a group of this caliber to truly move the research needle forward,” Sung Poblete, RN, PhD, CEO of FARE, said in the release.

The council’s other members are:

• James Allison, PhD, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center;
• Regina Barzilay, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
• Wesley Burks, MD, UNC Health;
• Judy Cho, MD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai;
• Alessio Fasano, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital;
• Tanya Laidlaw, MD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital;
• Hugh Sampson, MD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and
• Padmanee Sharma, MD, PhD, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Reference:

• About us. https://www.foodallergy.org/about-us/fare-scientific-advisory-council. Accessed May 25, 2023.