Your donation will be matched one-to-one by a challenge match from the Hartman Family Foundation
We are thrilled to announce an exciting, limited-time opportunity to double your impact in the fight to cure food allergies.
A $1.2 million challenge grant from the Hartman Family Foundation is now available to match your donations to bring a food allergy “vaccine” one step closer to reality. Your support will help launch a new study led by Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD, with the potential to bring lasting change to the lives of millions of children and adults facing food allergies.
Your support now will help raise the remaining $1.2 million still needed to launch this exciting study. Once the full amount has been raised, the trial can begin within three months.
You can make your secure online donation at www.supportLPCH.org/HartmanChallenge or by contacting Lindsey Hincks at Lindsey.Hincks@lpfch.org or (650) 736-1021. Your gift will be matched one-to-one by the Hartman Family Foundation’s challenge match.
What inspired the Hartman Family Foundation to make this gift?
“Dr. Nadeau’s food allergy research has already changed our family’s lives permanently,” said Kim Hartman, whose teenage son faced deadly allergies to numerous nuts. “Before oral immunotherapy [OIT] he was not able to tolerate even 1/16th of a nut. Today, he has the ability to eat up to 50 nuts per day if he wanted. More importantly, we no longer live in fear of accidental exposure or cross contamination.”
Kim and her husband, Alan, say their 15-year-old son now has freedom to enjoy normal experiences like eating in ice cream shops, visiting friends’ houses, and one day going to college without the constant vigilance that once marked their daily lives. The Hartmans want to give back so that other families can experience freedom from food allergies, but in a new way that avoids some of the hurdles their son had to overcome in his path toward allergy desensitization.
“We looked into trials for years,” said Kim. “Our son was so tired of having to eat before going to parties and missing out on things that other children take for granted. When he began OIT in 2014, we were very grateful for the opportunity but it was not without challenges. Not only did he have to miss school to participate in the trials, he had to find the courage to eat foods that for his entire life had been considered ‘poison.’”
Alan Hartman added, “The point is not just the ability to eat peanuts. We want to help more children like our son live safe, de-stressed lives. That’s why we are supporting Dr. Nadeau’s innovative research as she takes the next major step toward developing better and more lasting treatment.”
What is the goal of this “vaccine” research?
Nadeau and her team at the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University have already led the way in making catalytic advances in food allergy research, successfully desensitizing 738 patients to date from their allergies, in some cases from multiple allergies at the same time.
Building upon her findings, Nadeau believes new, safer, quicker, and potentially curative approaches are now possible. One candidate is an allergy “vaccine.”
Nadeau aims to test an approach called peptide “vaccine” immunotherapy. Similar to a tuberculosis test, the food allergy “vaccine” would go under the skin to stimulate a specific set of immune cells and permanently reduce or suppress allergic reactions.
“This could be a breakthrough for our field and we are grateful to the Hartman Foundation for making it possible through their gift,” said Nadeau. “We hope that with your help, we can close the matched gift since we would like to start in Summer 2016.”
How can I double my impact and help launch this study?
You can make your secure online donation a supportLPCH.org/HartmanChallenge contacting Lindsey Hincks at Lindsey.Hincks@lpfch.org or (650) 736-1021. Your impact will be doubled by the Hartman Family Foundation’s challenge match.
Your support would launch this research at a critical juncture. This would be a flagship study: if proven effective for peanut allergies, this same approach potentially could be used for other allergens such as milk, eggs, and cashews. Participants’ lives could possibly be transformed within months of active treatment.
Gifts of any size can make a difference. Nadeau is quick to acknowledge that the strides her team has made so far are directly the result of a generous and passionate community of supporters, who have collectively made gifts of all levels to accelerate progress toward a cure for all allergies.
“Your support can make a difference in people’s lives,” agreed Alan. “What is so important to us is that the money goes directly where it needs to—every dollar given goes toward innovative research conducted by Dr. Nadeau.”
“We cannot make progress without generous organizations and families like the Hartman Family Foundation,” said Nadeau. “Ninety-five percent of our research funding has been made possible by donors. They are what propel us forward into this exciting new frontier of care for allergic diseases.”
To learn more about the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University, please visit med.stanford.edu/allergyandasthma.html.