Our Model
A Global Institute for Food Allergy Research
FASI is a global nonprofit built to lead food allergy science toward a cure. Our internal scientific team brings direction, continuity, and drug development expertise to a consortium of principal investigators, scientific advisors, and cross-disciplinary experts across the biological and biomedical sciences. Together, we tackle the questions with the greatest potential to change the course of food allergy.
Our network includes researchers, advisors, and collaborators affiliated with leading institutions, including The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Yale School of Medicine, Mass General Brigham, Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital, The Rockefeller University, and Northwestern University.
The strength of this consortium lies in what we accomplish together. FASI brings the complementary expertise of our internal scientists and collaborators into a coordinated research effort, developing the capabilities to investigate ambitious questions, validate discoveries in people, and advance the strongest opportunities toward patients and families. Our internal leadership and global partnerships give this work its scientific depth, focus, and momentum.
FASI’s philanthropic model sustains this focused, flexible, and collaborative research and gives our scientists and partners the freedom to pursue promising questions and act on emerging discoveries. Because FASI’s operating costs are covered separately, 100% of philanthropic donations directly support this research.
DEPLOYED IN RESEARCH
FUNDING
PROJECTS FUNDED
INVESTIGATORS
Why does food allergy begin?
Building the science of prevention.
FASI investigates the early biological events that can lead the immune system to treat certain foods as threats. We study the microbiome, barrier biology, immune development, and environmental exposures to understand how food allergy takes hold and inform more effective ways to prevent it.
What drives allergic reactions and disease activity?
Understand reactions. Identify new ways to intervene.
What triggers a reaction? Why does severity vary? What keeps the disease active? FASI studies the cells, antibodies, inflammatory signals, and communication between the nervous and immune systems that may provide answers. These insights create new directions for measuring disease and developing treatments.
How might immune memory be reset or tolerance restored?
Pursue the biology of a cure.
In persistent food allergy, immune memory can keep the body prepared to react to foods it has learned to recognize as dangerous. FASI investigates how that memory forms, which signals maintain it, and how tolerance may be restored. The goal is to identify ways to change the course of the disease and advance the science needed for a cure.
How we move the science forward
We put discovery to work. A promising insight needs evidence to advance. FASI brings scientific leadership, research capabilities and collaboration to each stage of the work.
01 | discover
Reveal the roots of the disease
We advance foundational research into how food allergy begins and persists. These discoveries clarify the biology of disease and open new directions for diagnosis, treatment, and therapeutic development.
02 | validate
Establish relevance in people
We test whether promising discoveries hold true in human biology. The evidence reveals which biological signals matter in food allergy and which discoveries are strong enough to advance.
03 | advance
Prepare for therapeutic development
We bring medicines-focused discipline to the most compelling opportunities through FAMA™, our Food Allergy Medicines Accelerator™. This work strengthens the evidence needed to move promising discoveries into the next stage of development.
