Physician researcher mixes AI, immunology and analytics to free patients from food allergies

In a laboratory at the Food Allergy Institute (FAI) in Long Beach, Calif., stacks of sealed plastic storage containers full of gummy candies of various colors line a long shelf. A label on each container displays the name of a different allergen: “peanut” for orange gummies; “mustard” for yellow; “pine” and “flax” for teal and magenta, respectively. The fruit-flavored gummies, which contain small proteins from each allergen are part of the institute’s novel treatment plan for children and adults with severe food allergies.

“The scope of our work, involving data analytics, artificial intelligence and immunology, has totally changed the way we do things. And it shows how thinking outside the box and being an expert in multiple fields allows one to advance things at a pace that has not been seen before,” says Inderpal Randhawa, founder and CEO of FAI, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in 1997.

Randhawa’s own background is multidisciplinary: His major at USC Dornsife focused on molecular biology and biochemistry, but he also gained immunology research experience. The combination laid the foundation for his future work with FAI and its parent entity, the nonprofit Translational Pulmonary and Immunology Research Center, which Randhawa founded and where he is CEO and chief medical officer.

“At USC, you get a lot of broad opportunities within the sciences. Combining biochemistry with immunology is really unusual, but I was able to conduct research on immune injury repair models and dial it down to a cell-signaling level, almost a chemistry level. You don’t get that sort of experience many places,” Randhawa says.

Diversity of opportunities and experiences

Randhawa was born in Galveston, Texas, but his family later moved to the Inland Empire region of Southern California, where he attended high school. Randhawa’s father, who immigrated from India, was a veterinarian, and Randhawa grew up wanting to pursue a career in medicine, albeit on the human side.

A USC Associates Trustee Scholarship, which covered all four years of tuition at the university, and opportunities for undergraduate research prompted him to attend the university for his undergraduate studies.

In addition to providing scholarly opportunities, Randhawa says the university allowed him to connect with people from different backgrounds and different interests.

“Diversity is a big selling point for USC. I still stay in touch with folks who are in engineering, the film school or in music, and that’s not that common at other institutions,” Randhawa says. He adds that he was grateful to be able to bring some of his family’s culture to the school as well, by founding the college’s first Sikh student organization, which still exists.

More learning experiences came in the form of his work with the Joint Educational Project (JEP), an experiential learning program at USC Dornsife.

“An experience like JEP, where you’re talking to the young kids who are in impoverished situations and how they handle anxiety, stress and education — that was eye-opening. And when you think about how health care should serve vulnerable populations, definitely some of those experiences were very meaningful,” he says.

Holistic approach to treatment

Randhawa’s interest in severe food allergies was sparked by a desire to relieve the fear felt by individuals and their families who know that the tiniest trace of a peanut or drop of cow’s milk could kill an otherwise healthy person within a few short minutes.

“The first few times I saw a healthy person die so suddenly, I would ask, ‘Why do you think this is happening? Why is it so severe?’ But nobody seemed to want to answer the question,” he says. “One summer I saw 13 cases, many of them fatal, in roughly a five-month period, and I decided there had to be a better way.”

Randhawa aimed to forge that better way by creating FAI’s Tolerance Induction Program. Clinicians in the program expose patients to allergen proteins and use data analytics and other sophisticated tools to measure their responses to those proteins.

After assessing these interactions, institute staff come up with a strategic, individualized plan to safely introduce protein structures similar to those in the allergens, but with the more harmful parts reduced, into each patient’s system using those colorful gummies.

Randhawa says his institute has put more than 15,000 patients into remission, where they no longer have a severe reaction to an allergen.

He hopes to continue to integrate evolving technologies, especially AI, into his work. The future of medicine and science, he says, depends on being able to draw on different fields to more comprehensively understand a problem.

“I’ve never wanted to be in a box. I always wanted to be active and be a specialist in multiple areas. I am studying outside of the typical areas and bringing that knowledge back to my fields to see if we can advance things faster,” he says.