The new awards will support consortium-wide clinical research projects, which may include treatment or prevention clinical trials.

RT’s Three Key Takeaways: 

  • NIAID has awarded 11 new cooperative agreements to the Consortium for Food Allergy Research (CoFAR), with plans to fund these awards with more than $11 million annually over the next seven years, subject to funding availability.
  • The CoFAR’s recent OUtMATCH clinical trial demonstrated that omalizumab (Xolair) treatment significantly increased the tolerance of allergic children to common allergens like peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, milk, and wheat, leading to FDA approval of Xolair for food allergies.
  • The new funding will support both consortium-wide clinical research projects, including potential treatment or prevention trials, and local food allergy-related clinical studies at individual CoFAR sites, alongside the completion of the OUtMATCH trial’s remaining stages.

NIAID has awarded 11 new cooperative agreements to support the Consortium for Food Allergy Research, or CoFAR, in the latest renewal of the program since its establishment 19 years ago. 

The institute expects to fund the awards with more than $11 million annually for seven years, contingent upon funding availability. 

CoFAR’s goal is to conduct clinical research on food allergy prevention and therapy and on the biological mechanisms underlying food allergy. Conducting clinical research with a consortium of multiple study sites enables investigators to pursue questions that can only be answered through the participation of high numbers of study volunteers. Consortia also can potentially recruit a more diverse set of study participants than any single site could. 

Most recently, CoFAR’s OUtMATCH clinical trial found that treatment with omalizumab (Xolair) substantially increased the amount of peanut, tree nuts, egg, milk, and wheat that multi-food allergic children as young as 1 year could consume without experiencing an allergic reaction. 

The Food and Drug Administration approved Xolair for people with food allergy based on the study findings. 

The new awards will support consortium-wide clinical research projects, which may include treatment or prevention clinical trials. The selection process for these consortium-wide projects began in March 2024. The awards also will support local food allergy-related clinical studies conducted by individual CoFAR sites and the completion of the remaining stages of the OUtMATCH trial. 

Award Recipients

The awards have been issued to the following institutions as one leadership center and 10 clinical research centers:

Leadership Center

  • Johns Hopkins University (JHU)
    Principal Investigators: Robert A. Wood (JHU), Supinda Bunyavanich, and Scott H. Sicherer (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) 


Clinical Research Centers

  • Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute
    Principal Investigator: Stacie M. Jones 
  • Boston Children’s Hospital
    Principal Investigator: Rima Rachid 
  • Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
    Principal Investigators: Amal Halim Assa’ad, Marc E. Rothenberg 
  • Icahn School Of Medicine at Mount Sinai
    Principal Investigator: Scott H. Sicherer 
  • Johns Hopkins University 
    Principal Investigator: Robert A. Wood 
  • Northwestern University at Chicago
    Principal Investigators: Ruchi S. Gupta, Maria Cecilia Berin 
  • Stanford University
    Principal Investigators: Sayantani B. Sindher, R. Sharon Chinthrajah  
  • University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
    Principal Investigators: James R. Baker, Johann Eli Gudjonsson, Charles F. Schuler 
  • University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
    Principal Investigators: Edwin Kim, Corinne Keet 
  • Vanderbilt University Medical Center
    Principal Investigators: Leonard B. Bacharier, Rachel Glick Robison

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