The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced recently that it would be winding down its mRNA vaccine development. Michael Teng, associate professor with the Division of Allergy & Immunology at USF health explained more.
"My understanding of the cuts, is this funding for research into mRNA vaccines. The idea is that these are vaccines that have not yet been approved and are currently under development. Most of these vaccines that I'm aware of are things like influenza vaccines. both the seasonal vaccines as well as some of the vaccines they're trying to develop in case avian influenza comes out into humans," said Teng.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims that after studying the effectiveness of these vaccines, it was determined that they were not adequate enough, and will shift funding to other means of vaccinations, that remain effective as viruses mutate.
"The actual fact of the matter is that the mRNA vaccines have been extremely effective at preventing serious infections. Because we have had so many doses that have come out so quickly, I think some people in the public are concerned that these vaccines were rolled out too quickly. The funding that's being cut is actually the research into doing more to figuring out how these mRNA vaccines work and we can get them work better," said Teng.
Teng says that the cuts, which total nearly $500 million in funding, are highly focused on vaccines.
"The kind of weird thing about this, is they're only targeting vaccines. They haven't seemed to touch mRNA usage in other diseases, such as cancer," said Teng.
The wind down will encompass a large scope of project being cut and defunded, as the HHS says it will focus more on finding "evidence based, ethically grounded solutions."
"It's certainly going to put a damper on the ability to get the current mRNA vaccines that are in clinical trials through. It may cause the companies to rethink. A lot of the clinical trials do require government partnership in order to do the trials, because our phase three clinical trails involve large numbers of people, so its actually a pretty expensive endeavor," said Teng.