Ep. 239: The Latest from the Food Allergy Fund

We learn how one organization, the Food Allergy Fund, is tackling the food allergy conundrum through specific research funding. Focusing on the root cause of food allergies, the Food Allergy Fund is a unique part of our food allergy community, making a significant impact. The Fund's Founder and CEO, Ilana Golant, joins us to discuss their current research, the annual Innovation and Investment Summit, and their partnership with Nickelodeon to raise awareness about food allergies.

Resources to keep you in the know:

• Food Allergy Fund
• Food Allergy Fund Summit - April 2025

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Thanks for listening! FAACT invites you to discover more exciting food allergy resources at FoodAllergyAwareness.org!

Transcript

Caroline: Welcome to FAACT's Roundtable, a podcast dedicated to navigating life with food allergies across the lifespan. Presented in a welcoming format with interviews and open discussions,

each episode will explore a specific topic, leaving you with the facts to know or use.

Information presented via this podcast is educational and not intended to provide individual medical advice.

Please consult with your personal board-certified allergist or healthcare providers for advice specific to your situation.

Hi everyone, I'm Caroline Moassessi and I am your host for the FAACT Roundtable podcast.

I am a food allergy parent and advocate and the founder of the Grateful Foodie Blog. And I am FAACT's Vice President of Community Relations.

Before we start, we want to highlight FAACT's National Gold Sponsor, the National Peanut Board, and thank them for the years of continued support and partnership.

We sat down to learn how one organization, the Food Allergy Fund, is tackling the food allergy conundrum through specific research funding focusing on the root cause of food allergies. The Food Allergy Fund is a unique part of our community,

making a very significant impact.

The Food Allergy Fund's founder and CEO, Ilana Gallant is joining us today to discuss current research,

the recent summits, and then how they partnered with Nickelodeon to raise food allergy awareness.

Ilana, welcome back to FAACT's Roundtable podcast. I have been waiting to do this podcast because Food Allergy Fund is so exciting and the growth is so exciting and I think this is just is so important for everyone to hear about you and what's going on.

So welcome.

Ilana: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Caroline: Well, you are very welcome.

We're just going to get started here. We're all very excited to learn more about foodology, fun, how you've grown and then where you are today.

So let's start by getting to know you and the Food Allergy Fund. If you don't mind. If you can just share your background and then why you launched the Food Allergy Fund.

Ilana: In a nutshell, my daughter, I'm a lawyer by training, spent a decade in median PR and then had a daughter with multiple anaphylactic food allergies and had her first anaphylactic reaction at 13 months.

And I knew nothing about food allergies at that point.

No family history on either side. And that was my introduction to food allergies. And so we were living in New York at the time that she had her reaction. We moved to DC shortly thereafter and we were getting polar opposite medical advice from top, top doctors in two different cities.

And I was left to kind of figure out what to do with my tiny little infant who was allergic to so many foods. And as a mother, I was incredibly frustrated.

And so short of going to medical school myself, I really wanted to take on the research gap. Right. Why are there so many unknowns about what is causing food allergy?

What is causing the epidemic numbers to skyrocket? And what can we do to solve this problem and prevent the next allergen from forming, the next generation from having food allergies?

So how do we think about prevention and treatment? And really the answer to that is science. And so for me, I started the Food Allergy Fund by wearing my lawyer hat first and kind of researching the problem, figuring out what exists, what doesn't exist, who can we bring to the table to think about this?

And first kind of drew up a wish list of doctors and scientists across disciplines, across institutions, who could help us think through where our funding should go. And everyone universally said, yes, sign me up.

Because we so desperately need a focus on research.

Caroline: And I think it's so fascinating that your background was actually in law and then obviously a passion for science and how you've taken all these different talents and just moved it into this really profound direction.

And so now let's learn about Food Allergy Fund and your mission.

Let's learn everything there is to know about the Food Allergy Fund.

Ilana: Well, we're laser focused on accelerating research and innovation, so we're focused on funding cutting edge research across disciplines across the country.

We're now starting to fund globally as well and really trying to figure out the different puzzle pieces and putting them together. So we're doing everything from gut microbiome work to food fecal transplant as symbiotic therapies.

We also launched last year and are expanding a repurposing program where we're taking drugs that are already approved by the fda. So we know that safety has been established and seeing what drugs could be repurposed for food allergy.

They're often generic and so they're cheaper,

available and have been studied for a long time. And it's the first.

There's never been a repurposing program for food allergy before. So that's an exciting addition to our portfolio as well.

Caroline: That is very exciting. And so now digging a little deeper into the funding, on your website, you talk about your guiding principles that you use to fund projects. So if we can talk about that for just a moment.

Ilana: Yeah, I mean, collaboration, innovation, transparency are our core values. 100% of donations to FAF go directly to research, and that has been true of our mission since day one. And that is critically important.

Our board takes on all of our overhead expenses. So every family, when they're donating to FAF, whether they're donating $1,000 or $10,000, that money is going directly to research. And so to ensure that the money is being best spent and most strategically spent in terms of moving the research paradigm and advancing our knowledge of food allergy,

that's at our core. It's kind of transparency. And then the collaboration innovation piece is where can we bring teams of scientists together across institutions, across disciplines, where they're talking together.

We hosted our first ever research retreat as part of Research Week earlier this spring. And it was incredible because we had about 35 brilliant minds in a room together. And I said to them at the beginning, I said, this is going to be escape the room style.

And the only way to escape the room is by coming up with new collaborative projects.

And I am excited to share that we have so many new projects that have come out just by putting people in a room together.

Brilliant minds who of course knew of each other, respected each other professionally, but had never sat together for two days straight over meals and conversation and workshops to share knowledge, to share data sets, to say, well, oh, I'm already working on this piece and I can share this information and we can tag team in this way,

let alone kind of the creation of totally new projects. So I'm really excited for all the new work that we're going to be unveiling later this year as well, in addition to quite a few projects that we unveiled at our summit.

Caroline: Such a brilliant strategy, just to bring the brightest and most creative group together and not let them leave the room.

Although I'm sure it was pretty easy to get them going. I think once you got them going, it probably really took off.

Ilana: Yeah, it was incredible. We were with them for two days straight, morning till night, and we could have done it for two more days, 20 more days. I mean, there was just such an appetite for engagement and discussion that had kind of never been facilitated before.

It was pretty amazing to me. I kind of thought,

you know, I'll tell you the origin story of the research retreat. We did a lunch at Quad AI, which is the, you know, global Academy meeting, with thousands of people in attendance.

So a year ago we did a lunch to say thank you to our scientific advisory board and some of our grant recipients, which is kind of like a low key lunch.

We scheduled it for 90 minutes and after four hours they were still sitting there and I thought to myself,

don't you all talk like, why?

Why this, like hunger for interaction? And I naively thought, what? There must be some closed door meeting where the best scientists get together and put their minds together. Well,

the answer is no, that does not happen. That has not happened. And so that was really the genesis. Okay, well, how do we take this one, thank you, lunch and really put it on steroids and bring together as many minds as we can we.

While keeping it, you know, intimate enough that there can be real workshopping and actionable discussion.

Caroline: That's an incredible story, so thank you so much for sharing that.

So now looking right into those research projects, what are you currently working on and what highlights would you like our listeners to hear today?

Ilana: Yeah, I mean, two areas that have been of strategic growth to us are first, the gut microbiome.

You know, we're really interested in how gut dysregulation happens early in life with food allergy and what that means for lifelong gut health. And so we're working on quite a few projects ranging from a gut barrier integrity project at Northwestern to the first fecal transplant for food allergy at Boston Children's Hospital,

symbiotic therapy at the University of Chicago. So that just kind of gives you a sampling of kind of within one vertical. We have multiple projects at different institutions and kind of approaching it from different angles because we think that's so critically important.

I touched on repurposing earlier. We're already studying repurposing two drugs and we'll be adding two more drugs before year end. And so, you know, whether it's one drug or a combination of drugs, it's a really exciting pathway for us as well.

And no one else is doing it. Like we're the only ones looking at repurposing drugs for food allergy, which is really exciting,

and then bringing in novel technologies. So, you know, a focus of our summit and research retreat was bringing in AI and CRISPR technology.

So we funded the first AI project that is a predictive model of oral food challenges. So you and I both know how anxiety inducing food challenges are for the parent, the child,

and a lot of guesswork for the clinician. Right. Should we challenge? Should we not? How is it going to go? And so we really want to take that guesswork out and we have this incredible powerful tool called AI and we need to use it.

And so we shared the preliminary results at our summit and we're funding that project out of the Technion with an AI computational biology team that is basically looking At Food Challenge data from around the world and starting through AI to build a proprietary analytics platform to predict a.

Does the kid need to do a food challenge? Is that even necessary?

Be like, what food should we challenge first? In what order should we challenge?

What is the likelihood of success? And can we personalize the dosing based on all this vast data that's out there?

So again, we can take the guesswork out. We know that blood and skin testing continues to be like a highly flawed diagnostic tool. So until we can totally replace the food challenge, which would be really great in the absence of that, how do we make the Food Challenge and kind of bring this mindset of using technology to,

to bridge that gap? So we're really excited about that and we have,

we had a presenter at the summit working on CRISPR technology for the gut microbiome. Kind of the first application of CRISPR for food allergies. So we're really interested in taking technologies that are being widely used in life sciences, but haven't been used in food allergy specifically.

Caroline: This is so incredibly exciting. And listeners, if you could see our faces, I'm just sitting here going, wow, wow, wow. And. And Alana's face is just lit up. I mean, this is really exciting news and information and action.

Like, this is just crazy. I mean, my son was diagnosed 26, 24 years ago,

and, you know, we were told, like, you probably won't see, you know, big movement in your lifetime, like, just learn how to live with this. And so this is pretty mind blowing, you know, that you're actually pushing all this innovation and technology.

It's just, it's crazy. It's wonderful. Yeah.

Ilana: I mean, we've only been at it for five years and I am incredibly impatient, hopefully in the best possible sense of the word. But,

you know,

I, I don't want this future for my daughter. There's no reason that our children should be living with food allergies. The goal should be to get rid of food allergies.

And that's what we're working towards.

Caroline: Well, yay. I vote for that. And so now turning our conversation into these summits and research week, if you can explain what, what took place back at the very end of April.

And also just adding a note to that, if you don't mind mentioning to listeners how they can watch the video,

so forth, because that's pretty amazing that we as lay families, people living with allergies, supporters, friends, allies, can actually tap in and see what happened.

Ilana: Yeah, that's really important to us as well. So we Hosted our first research week in April. And I jokingly hope that Research Week becomes the new Fashion Week.

If only I were cool enough for that. But in any event, the way that we structured it this year, which was really exciting and gives me so much hope, is we had this two day research retreat that I mentioned earlier where we brought researchers together to really workshop ideas.

We then had a research evening where families could interact with researchers from 20 institutions across the country in one room, which was an incredible experience in itself. And then it culminated in the summit, which is our kind of signature event,

day long programming. We've done our summit since inception. In fact, I launched the Food Allergy Fund with a summit. That's not how you typically launch a nonprofit, but I was a producer, a news producer in a past life.

And so I really wanted to think about, okay, what's the storytelling aspect of the disease? What is the thought leadership? How do we bring all the stakeholders together? And so I launched PFAFF with a summit.

We've done 10 summits. We kind of doubled up at the height of COVID and did virtual summits. And to your point earlier, we make all of our content available.

So not only are the videos from this year's summit available on our website, but we have 10 summits worth of content. And it's an incredible content library and repository of knowledge.

And we make it available to the entire community because not everyone can come to New York and join us in person. And so we really want that knowledge to be shared far and wide, not only in the community, but outside the community as well.

Because to solve this, we really need everyone focused on the disease and not just those who are personally impacted. And now we're at kind of one degree of separation, alarmingly.

Caroline: Now let's turn our attention to raising awareness.

I did see back in May, you had a social media post where I think you were at Union Station. And then there was this big screen and then there was the campaign.

So talk to us about this campaign.

Ilana: Yeah, we partnered with Nickelodeon to produce a PSA featuring their Emmy award winning character, Tiny Chef, which was really appropriate and social media influencer Americana, who's a teenager with severe food allergies himself.

And so it was a really great way to bring kind of different parts of the ecosystem together to talk to the kids. Right. 1 in 13 kids has food allergies.

And so we really wanted families, children alike, to realize how prevalent food allergies are, how to think about including these children just being more inclusive and compassionate around food allergy.

And so The PSA aired throughout the month of May across all Nickelodeon platforms. Tv, digital,

social media.

There's a dedicated newsletter. We also built a resources page on our website along with the co branded with Nickelodeon.

We called it a 411 on food allergies, which was really great. And then to further amplify what was happening on Nickelodeon platforms and our channels,

we had billboards in Times Square and Union Station donated to us so that the message could be shared even more far and wide. And yes, I've been. I went to D.C.

twice in May and both times I walked off the platform and into Union City Station and it was all covered in food allergy. It was, I can't really describe it but it was so energizing and inspiring.

Like there's no way to time what billboard is running obviously in a massive train station or in Times Square for that matter.

And so actually I went to Times Square a few times as well and there I had to like stand a little bit longer. But when I got to Union Station the first thing I saw was our billboard.

I'm like, this is a sign that I'm,

you know,

meant to be here. And food allergy is finally on the agenda. So it was really fun to see the campaign on tv, on billboards, on social media. It was really exciting.

And you know, we look forward to continuing to use the PSA for months and years to come because it really speaks to how important it is to understand the food allergy epidemic.

And the food allergic child improves particular.

Caroline: And it normalizes food allergies too. I mean I watched the, the video and it just normalized it. It was like, well this is what we are, this is what it is and this is all about it.

And I just think that's so critical.

Ilana: Yeah, and the invisible aspect of food allergies, Right. I mean you don't know that someone is living with food allergies in way that you can kind of see outward manifestations of other life threatening conditions.

But food allergy at the end of the day is a life threatening disease and it is invisible except for the child and the family and the parent. It is visible 24 7.

Wherever you look, you see,

you see poison, right? You see,

you see alarms. And so that's really important as well. It's just to explain how top of mind it is. And we now know the average classroom has to allergic kids.

That is a startling, startling number.

Caroline: That is a lot. And it hasn't changed either. It's been there for a while. Well, I can't believe it. But our time is up. We could just talk all day. This has been so fun and exciting.

But before we wrap up, is there anything else you would like our listeners to hear from you?

Ilana: Get involved. Right. We really are so excited to build.

We have a lot of momentum and we really rely on volunteers as well. Well, so I would encourage folks listening to get involved with the Food Allergy Fund. Follow us on social Media, consider donating.

100% goes directly to research. But really get involved because science is going to solve this problem for us. And so the more that we can all rally as a community around the power of science, I think the better off we'll all be.

So thank you.

Caroline: Thank you for just sharing your time, your wisdom, your energy, and most of all, just thank you. Thank you for the work that you do. We know you do it tirelessly and from your heart and your brain.

And we all just appreciate that. So thank you so much.

Ilana: Thank you.

Caroline: Before we say goodbye today,

we just want to highlight one more time FAACT's National Gold sponsor, the National Peanut Board. And we would like to thank them for their years of continued support and partnership.

Thank you, for listening to FAACT's Round Table Podcast. Stay tuned for future episodes coming soon.

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