Could Poop Pills help People Tolerate more Peanut?

By Ilana Golant, Food Allergy Fund Founder and CEO

August 5, 2026

What does it take to move an unconventional scientific idea from the laboratory into people?

Often, it takes someone willing to fund the research before the evidence is obvious.

Years ago, Rima Rachid MD, Dr. Talal Chatila and their colleagues uncovered evidence that certain gut bacteria could influence whether the immune system develops tolerance to food. The findings pointed to an intriguing possibility: Could changing the microbiome help change the course of food allergy?

The Food Allergy Fund invested in translating that idea into people by supporting the world’s first oral fecal microbiota transplantation, or FMT, trial in adults with peanut allergy. We later provided additional support to expand the trial and investigate why some participants responded.

Those findings have now been published in Science Translational Medicine, part of the Science Magazine family of journals.

After one FMT treatment, six of 15 participants, or 40 percent, could consume more peanut before reacting. The improvement was still present four months later. Researchers also identified changes in immune cells and bile acid metabolism that provide clues about how gut microbes may help restore oral tolerance.

As a food allergy patient and parent, I understand what a higher reaction threshold could mean for families. But the larger scientific promise is the possibility of modifying the underlying disease rather than relying exclusively on treatments that must be taken indefinitely.

This was a small Phase I study, not proof of a cure. Larger studies are needed to determine who is most likely to benefit, how long the increased tolerance may last and how microbiome-based treatments could become more effective and practical.

But that is precisely why early funding matters.

Our role was not to assume the science would work. It was to make it possible to find out.

Based on the encouraging adult findings, FAF funded a separate Phase II study evaluating a more purified microbial transplantation therapy in teens with peanut allergy.

This is what scientific progress looks like: an unexpected discovery, an early investment, evidence in people and a foundation on which the field can build.

Promising ideas cannot become potential treatments if no one is willing to support the difficult steps in between.

Read the study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aee3263