Food Allergy Institute is biomedical innovator
Long Beach office shows how science, technology can keep people healthy
The Food Allergy Institute has developed a program to diagnose and treat food allergies among children using artificial intelligence — and Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson intends to leverage the company's success to expand the city's biomedical footprint.
Richardson met with the company's representatives, including CEO Dr. Inderpal Randhawa, to learn about the Tolerance Induction Program, which has helped more than 8,000 children overcome food allergies with a 99% success rate since 2007. Randhawa is responsible for creating that program — and for choosing Long Beach as the hub for the company's research and treatment of patients.
FAI has treated 650 to 750 children from Long Beach, Signal Hill and Lakewood.
Richardson was so impressed, he asked Randhawa to join his economics team to help lure biomedicine companies.
“I didn't know this amazing institute was here in Long Beach,” Richardson said, “and I like to know how we can repeat (its success) and grow it in the region.”
Tolerance Induction Program uses data obtained from each patient to create custom treatment regimens that last from six months to a 1½ years.
Randhawa said he and his executive team have filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration to scale the program's reach to families nationwide whose children can't eat peanuts, almonds, cashews, berries and many other nuts and fruits.
If the program earns the FDA's approval, it may be expanded to diagnose and treat food allergies among older adults.
“We have patients from all over the world,” Rand
hawa said to Nina Richardson, the mayor's wife, who attended the gathering with the research and development team to learn how the Tolerance Induction Program could also help adults with food allergies.
“This is the future of medicine,” Randhawa said, “and that's how it should work.”
The Tolerance Induction Program obtains databases from plant and animal proteins, as well as blood immunology, to recognize patterns of food allergy, said Linda Tat, account manager with Disruptive PR, who handles communications for FAI.
“Each new patient undergoes 400-plus biomarkers to start the program,” Tat said. “These markers are submitted to the AI system, which utilizes several quintillion data points from previously treated patients to recognize allergic risk. As such, the AI system will use the risk assessment to utilize biosimilar proteins to start the treatment process.”
Once diagnosed, patients start treatment with gummies personalized by age, weight and other metrics — and prescribed to treat particular allergies.
Patients allergic to almonds, for example, get a prescription of orange-colored gummies available in 1 mg bonbons, 2.5mg cubes and 5 mg hexagons. If a child has an orange allergy, they will be prescribed 25 mg gumdrops or 100 mg raspberries.
The institute also diagnoses and treats allergies caused by popular seafoods, including shrimp and fish served in sushi.
Randhawa, who has 18 years of experience working as a pediatrician and transplant immunologist and pulmonologist, started designing machinelearning models in 2012.
These models served to diagnose and treat food allergies and, Tat said, for the first time in medical history, they helped patients eat foods that once were life-threatening without remission or restriction.
Still, such treatments are not cheap. While insurances usually cover most of the program's cost, Randhawa said, patients are also billed $4,500 out of pocket.
But traditional methods to detect food allergies, such as skin and blood tests, can also cost many thousands of dollars, Tat said in an email — and they are not as accurate.
“In fact, the only way to truly know if a child is anaphylactic is to conduct a food challenge, which carries risk,” Tat said. “The Food Allergy Institute is utilizing AI and machine learning to accurately diagnose food allergies.”
Randhawa told Richardson that FAI generates $45 million a year for Long Beach in medical tourism, hotel occupancy, and travel related to families and patients visiting for diagnoses and treatment. The CEO said FAI has a yearly gross income of $25 million.
FAI has 325 employees, 240 of them in Long Beach. The company opened a new facility 1½ years ago to provide services in San Diego. FAI is planning to expand operations for customers and patients in the Bay Area.
Richardson invited Randhawa to join his economic development team to promote initiatives to attract biotech companies to Long Beach, with the goal to bring 100 new technological entities in the next five years.
The city, Richardson said, has a cluster of medical companies, including Blue Cross, Molina Healthcare and several regional hospitals — and now is a pivotal moment to foster growth.