The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has ended its contract with drugmaker Moderna to develop a vaccine to protect avian flu amid a wide range of efforts by agencies to reevaluate therapies that use mRNA technology.
The $590 million worth of contract was announced in mid-January, just before President Donald Trump’s second term.
Modanya said Wednesday that early trials of an mRNA-based vaccine against H5 avian influenza in about 300 healthy adults showed a “fast, strong and durable immune response.”
“While the end of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased with our robust immune response and safety profile, and we explore alternative paths for the program.” “These clinical data from pandemic influenza highlight the important role mRNA technology has played in combating emerging health threats.”
However, HHS said Wednesday that the project did not meet scientific or safety expectations for ongoing investment.
“After a rigorous review, we concluded that Moderna’s ongoing investment in H5N1 mRNA vaccine cannot be scientifically or ethically justified,” Andrew Nixon, director of HHS Communications, said in a statement. “The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested and we haven’t repeated the last administration’s mistakes by spending taxpayer dollars.
The Trump administration is trying to assess mRNA research and technology and ensure transparency, administration officials told CNN last month.
mRNA technology is already in use with the COVID-19 vaccines currently licensed by Modern and Pfizer/Biontech. These have been found to be safe and effective. However, public health experts have expressed concern that anti-vaccine sentiment in general, and that anti-mRNA sentiment in particular could hinder people’s access to vaccines.
“Attacks on mRNA vaccines are beyond absurd,” Dr. Ashish Ja, dean of Brown University School of Public Health and White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator for the Biden administration, said on social media on Wednesday. “It was President Trump’s speed of operation that provides MRNA vaccines. These vaccines have been administered nearly 2 billion times to hundreds of millions of people around the world, making them one of the most widely used and widely studied vaccines in human history. They are safe and well-functioning.
“If bird flu is spreading from people to people, we’ll start regretting this as the day we decided to put American lives at a serious risk.”
Avian influenza, or avian influenza, is a broad term that refers to several types of influenza that normally infect birds. The H5N1 virus has caused concern among health officials as it has caused dozens of people in the United States to be ill and killed.
The US has vaccines against the H5 virus in its strategic national stockpile, but they are made with old technology.
In February, Bloomberg News reported that U.S. health officials were reevaluating their Moderna contracts.
“I’m extremely disappointed, frankly,” Dr. Paul Friedrichs, a doctor and a leading Air Force general who was director of the White House office for the Biden administration’s pandemic preparation and response policy, told CNN in March. “One of the real challenges when new pathogens emerge is that it takes time to produce therapeutics and it takes time to produce vaccines.
“So we worked very closely with the industry to find ways to fund research and clinical trials, making various options available if the virus becomes more dangerous,” he said. “Because we don’t know what will happen next with this virus.”
CNN’s Deidre McPhillips, Brenda Goodman and Jacqueline Howard contributed to this report.