From Fear to Freedom: A Student Researcher is inspired by the lasting impact of Food Allergy Immunotherapy

Isabella Babicki-Moore lives with severe anaphylactic allergies to nearly all nuts, along with kiwi and mango — the kind of allergies that bring a serious risk to every school lunch, every restaurant menu, every birthday party and family celebration. That lived experience is part of what drew the third-year McGill University physiology and psychology student to (successfully!) apply to spend her summer digging into the long-term outcomes of Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) for children with food allergies.

What the research is showing her

Working under the supervision of Dr. Jennifer Tong, Dr. Raymond Mak, and Dr. Lianne Soller at B.C. Children's Hospital, Isabella is studying children who have completed oral immunotherapy treatment as preschoolers. The project she is working on over the summer is looking at three things: whether children are consistently eating foods containing their allergens, how parents' food-associated anxiety has been affected by the treatment, and how effective the treatment has been at reducing or eliminating serious allergic reactions that require an EpiPen, hospital treatment, or both.

The early results are strikingly positive!

Isabella says a whopping 98 per cent of participants are still consuming their allergen, with only a small number reporting mild reactions — none serious enough to require hospitalization or epinephrine (EpiPen). The data also show a marked drop in parental food-associated anxiety from before treatment to after — a reminder that OIT's benefits extend well beyond the food challenge itself and into the everyday peace of mind of the families living with severe food allergies.

An abstract on the findings has been submitted to the Canadian Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (CSACI) conference, and an abstract and poster will be presented at the BC Children's Hospital Research Institute (BCCHR) Summer Student Research Program Poster Day — Isabella's first experience contributing to scientific research, in addition to learning about abstract writing and research methods and protocols. Both abstracts and the poster list 15 co-authors.

Why it matters

For Isabella, the summer has been more than a research placement. It's been an opportunity to imagine a future where fewer families live with the daily fear that affected her own childhood. She says the experience has only deepened her drive to do work that combines psychology with the scientific realm of data and facts.

"I'm very grateful to CANFAIT and its supporters for the funding and for inspiring me to use this experience to learn how I can help improve people's quality of life through my studies and my work," says Isabella.

For CANFAIT donors, her work is a clear, concrete example of what your support makes possible: safer, more affordable, home-based treatment that is measurably changing lives — and giving young researchers like Isabella the tools to prove it.

Isabella's research was made possible by donor support to the Canadian FAIT Foundation