Patients first. Scientists second.
Our Story
We’re members of a club no one wants to belong to.
Each of our founders has experienced the terror of watching their child have a life-threatening allergic reaction to a food that is normally harmless. Nuts. Fruit. Legumes. Eggs. Dairy. It’s frightening. And maddening.
The lack of treatments has been frustrating. The lack of a proper diagnosis even more so. And the lack of reasoning – absolutely exasperating. But it’s that exasperation that led us to do our own research where we discovered the real underlying issue: there’s just simply not enough known about the very biology of food allergies. And that makes it virtually impossible to systematically develop effective cures.
In 2015, we organized a symposium to bring together experts to discuss the issues at hand. And in 2016, with growing support and an increasingly louder voice, we launched the Food Allergy Science Initiative (FASI) with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
In just a short time, FASI has made tremendous progress pioneering important new discoveries – attracting talented researchers, facilitating scientific and public outreach and nurturing the food allergy community. FASI is now a multifaceted initiative that spans world-class labs across the United States. In 2021, FASI launched as an independent 501(c)(3) organization.
We are now entering a new era of rationally designed approaches to allergies. Someday soon food challenges, allergen avoidance and EpiPens will be relics of the past. And this club we belong to will no longer be accepting any new members.
Our Mission
Our mission is to accelerate the development of breakthrough discoveries that will transform the lives of people living with food allergies. But it’s our process that’s the real giant leap forward.
FASI is breaking down barriers in the way science is done. Instead of competition, we focus on collaboration. We are a collection of leaders and creative thinkers working across 20 different labs in multiple fields with unique skillsets. Together, we share our expertise and apply diverse technologies to better understand the body’s response to food at both the cellular and molecular level. This allows us to make dramatic progress and catalyze the development of new diagnostics and therapeutics.
FASI is philanthropically funded, which gives us the flexibility to move quickly and boldly to follow the science in the most promising directions. Our unique approach breaks down silos and allows us to pursue the gaps in scientific knowledge outside of the usual grant application process.
Our Model
We don’t just fund discovery. We drive it.
FASI has brought together a team of experts from across diverse fields of research from some of the greatest institutions in the world. Our team cross-pollinates between immunology, gastroenterology, infectious disease, neuroscience, computational biology and engineering to better understand the fundamental mechanisms of allergic disease. This collective enables bold ideas through innovation and data-driven flexibility – and has already resulted in seminal advances in the study of food allergy.
Our model allows us to be simultaneously aggressive and nimble. We’re changing the game by building the science itself, then recruiting the right scientists, researchers and adventurers for the job.
We’re turning grant making into science making.