Calls for Proposals Inspiring the Most Innovative Ideas for Skin and Gut Microbiome Approaches To Food Allergy
New York, NY (April 5, 2022) — The Food Allergy Fund, a non-profit committed to bridging the funding gap for scientific research into food allergies, announced today it is accepting proposals for its first Microbiome Challenge. The grant(s) will be awarded to the researcher or team of researchers with the most evidence based and innovative approach to mitigating the causes and symptoms of food allergies via the skin and gut microbiome. The grant(s) will be awarded up to $500,000.
Food Allergies are an emerging public health crisis. Six million children—out of 32 million Americans overall—are affected by food allergies. That's two children per classroom – a 50% increase from 1997 to 2011. Every three minutes, a person visits the emergency room due to an allergic reaction.
Yet research on causes and treatment is severely underfunded. Which is why Ilana Golant created the Food Allergy Fund: FAF’s mission is to raise awareness and money for scientific research. This mission is personal as Ilana is a mother to a child with food allergies.
“The rising number of people living with food allergies is grave and dangerous and I am committed to supporting new research to turn the numbers upside down,” said Golant. “I’ve assembled an impressive Scientific Advisory Board to screen and select grant recipients to fund ground-breaking ideas into the underlying causes and improved treatments for all food allergies.”
The Food Allergy Fund’s Scientific Advisory Board includes immunologists, clinicians, microbiologists, gastroenterologists, and chemical engineers from institutions such as Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Mount Sinai, NYU Langone, Stanford, and Yale and brings a comprehensive perspective on the research. The full list of Board members can be found below and at https://foodallergyfund.org/scientific-advisory-board/.
To submit a research proposal for the Microbiome Challenge, please submit a two-page letter of intent with a copy of your CV to research@foodallergyfund.org by May 5, 2022.
Please note the following:
Proposals will be reviewed by the SAB and scored on the NIH scoring scale (1-9). Innovation and collaboration (across disciplines and/or institutions) will be prioritized in the scoring process.
The top scoring candidates based on the letter of intent and CV will be notified and requested to submit more detailed proposals.
Grant recipient(s) indirect costs are capped at 10%.
All 2022 grant applicants must be willing to create a short video (10-15 minutes) presentation that will be pre-recorded by the Food Allergy Fund. The video should be a vibrant description of your proposal and may be shown at the FAF Summit in December 2022. Not all applicants will be selected for this opportunity.
Please note that funding for this Challenge will in part be provided by Janssen Biotech, Inc. As such, FAF reserves the right to share proposals with relevant third parties.
Media contact: press@foodallergyfund.org
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The Food Allergy Fund is the leading nonprofit dedicated to funding food allergy research. FAF aims to identify underlying causes, discover new therapeutics, and improve the lives of all people living with food allergies. Through our ground-breaking research and unique thought leadership summits, we accelerate innovation to find solutions. To learn more, visit www.foodallergyfund.org.
The Scientific Advisory Board
Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome
Professor, Department of Medicine and Microbiology
Director, Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine
RBHS, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Director, Boyd Lab for Human Immunology
Member, Child Health Research Institute
Member, Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy & Asthma Research
Associate Professor of Pathology
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stephanie Eisenbarth, M.D., Ph.D.
Chief, Division of Allergy and Immunology
Director, Center for Human Immunobiology
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Director, Psychosocial Clinical Program, Division of Allergy &
Immunology Assistant Professor, Division of Psychology & Behavioral
Health Children's National Health System
Chief, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition
Boston Children's Hospital
Director, Harvard Digestive Diseases Center
Professor of Chemical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Associate Member, Broad Institute
Associate Member, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard
Chief of the Division of Clinical Immunology
Merksamer Professor in Immunology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Director, Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research
Naddisy Foundation Endowed Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics
Stanford University School of Medicine
Assistant Professor of Immunobiology
Yale University School of Medicine
Kurt Hirschhorn Professor of Pediatrics
Director Emeritus, Jaffe Food Allergy Institute
Past President, American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Wayne G. Shreffler, M.D., Ph.D.
Chief, Pediatric Allergy & Immunology
Director, Food Allergy Center
Massachusetts General Hospital
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Director, Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Food Allergy Institute
Chief, Division of Allergy and Immunology, Department of Pediatrics
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Co-Chair, Consortium of Food Allergy Research (CoFAR)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Chair, Department of Environmental Health and Engineering
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Director, Molecular Biology Core
Associate Chief for Research, Division of Gastroenterology
Associate Director, Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Disease
Ferdinand G. Weisbrod Professor in Gastroenterology
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania