By Ilana Golant, Food Allergy Fund Founder and CEO
November 2, 2026
What happens when scientists studying cancer, autoimmune diseases and the microbiome turn their attention to food allergy?
New ideas. Unexpected collaborations. And promising discoveries.
That's what we saw at the Food Allergy Fund's San Francisco Innovation Forum, where leading scientists, biotech executives and investors came together to explore what's next for food allergy prevention and treatment.
FAF-funded researchers shared new findings about how the immune system recognizes food, how gut bacteria influence food tolerance and a molecule that could offer a new approach to preventing severe allergic reactions.
One collaboration began at FAF's 2025 Research Retreat, where Dr. Chrysothemis Brown of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Dr. Carlotta Ronda of the University of California, Berkeley, met for the first time. Now, with FAF funding, they're exploring whether engineered beneficial bacteria could one day help restore food tolerance.
The Forum also highlighted advances from biotech companies developing new approaches to prevention and longer-lasting treatments. Investors emphasized the importance of philanthropic funding in helping promising ideas gain momentum before commercial investment, while patient perspectives reinforced the need to develop treatments that address the realities of living with food allergies.
This is what FAF is working to make possible: bringing together expertise from different fields, funding promising research and helping discoveries move toward treatments that could change lives.
Learn more about FAF’s San Francisco Innovation Forum.