New $15 million grant aims to better understand food allergies

The nonprofit Food Allergy and Research Education just awarded scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and seven other institutions $15 million to study the brain-gut connection in food allergies. Although 10% of people in the U.S. are thought to have a food allergy, diagnosing and treating them is still challenging. The three-year grant hopes to uncover the basics of food allergies through three main goals: understanding how the gut senses allergens in foods to then create a map of neurons in the gut; understanding how the gut and brain communicate with each other to either suppress or promote an immune reaction in response to allergens; and creating a visual map of the different biological components involved by using imaging tools.