Mount Sinai Receives $7.2 Million NIH Grant to Advance Precision Medicine for Peanut Allergy Treatment
New multidisciplinary research center will identify biomarkers and biological pathways that predict response to peanut allergy treatments
Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have been awarded a five-year, $7.2 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to establish a new Asthma and Allergic Diseases Cooperative Research Center focused on advancing personalized treatment strategies for peanut allergy.
The study, known as Immunologic Trajectories of Peanut Desensitization or INROADS, will investigate the biological mechanisms that drive peanut allergy desensitization and identify biomarkers that can help predict which patients are most likely to benefit from treatment. The initiative brings together experts in allergy, immunology, omics, artificial intelligence, computational biology, and clinical research from across Mount Sinai to advance precision medicine approaches for food allergy care.
Peanut allergy affects nearly 2 percent of adults and up to 5 percent of children in some regions of the United States. Its prevalence has tripled in recent decades, making it one of the most common and potentially life-threatening food allergies. Although recently approved therapies—including peanut oral immunotherapy and the allergy medication omalizumab—have improved treatment options, clinicians currently have no reliable way to predict treatment response or understand why therapies are effective for some patients but not others.
“Mount Sinai has played a leading role in developing and advancing therapies that have transformed care for patients with peanut allergy,” said Supinda Bunyavanich, MD, MPH, MPhil, Contact Principal Investigator of INROADS and Deputy Director of the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital. “This new center allows us to take the next critical step toward precision medicine by identifying the immune and molecular pathways that determine treatment success. Our goal is to help ensure that every patient receives the therapy most likely to benefit them.”
Dr. Bunyavanich is also the Mount Sinai Professor in Allergy and Systems Biology and a Professor of Pediatrics, and Genetics and Genomic Sciences, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The INROADS center builds on decades of pioneering peanut allergy research at Mount Sinai, including studies that contributed to Food and Drug Administration approvals of peanut oral immunotherapy and omalizumab. Investigators recently demonstrated that, through careful characterization of peanut allergy sensitivity, many patients can be safely and effectively desensitized using measured amounts of store-bought peanut products. These findings may help expand access to treatment and challenge longstanding assumptions about peanut allergy management.
“Families living with peanut allergy face constant uncertainty and vigilance,” said Scott H. Sicherer, MD, Multiple Principal Investigator of INROADS, Director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute, and Chief, Serena and John Liew Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “The discoveries generated through this center have the potential to fundamentally improve how we deliver desensitization therapies, making them more personalized, more effective, and ultimately more accessible for patients and families.”
The center includes two major research projects:
- MICRO-TRACK, which will use advanced immune profiling technologies, allergen-specific T cell studies, and laboratory models to identify biological markers that predict treatment response and reveal mechanisms of immune regulation during desensitization.
- SPADE, which will apply transcriptomics and machine learning approaches to uncover molecular signatures associated with successful desensitization and develop predictive tools that may help guide clinical decision-making.
Supporting these projects will be three integrated cores:
- PATHWAYS Clinical Core, which will provide clinical data and biological samples from patients undergoing oral food challenge testing before and after desensitization therapies
- Administrative Core, which will coordinate scientific activities, center operations, and collaborations across the national Asthma and Allergic Diseases Cooperative Research Center network
- Data Stewardship Core, which will oversee biospecimen management, data integration, and sharing of research resources with the broader scientific community
By combining detailed clinical information with comprehensive immune and molecular analyses, investigators aim to create one of the most robust datasets ever assembled for peanut allergy desensitization research. These data will be made publicly available to accelerate discovery and collaboration across the field.
“Our integrated approach brings together clinical expertise, cutting-edge immunology, omics, artificial intelligence, and computational science to answer some of the most important unanswered questions in food allergy research,” said Dr. Sicherer. “The insights gained from INROADS may not only improve outcomes for peanut allergy but also inform the treatment of other food allergies and allergic diseases.”
Faculty participating in the center also include Erik Wambre, PhD; Julie Wang, MD; Pei Wang, PhD; Kristin Beaumont, PhD; and Seung-Hee Kim-Schulze, PhD, representing the Departments of Pediatrics, Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Immunology and Immunotherapy, and related research programs across the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The INROADS center is funded by NI AID through the Asthma and Allergic Diseases Cooperative Research Centers program.
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