FDA vaccine chief leaving agency after less than 3 months
Washington – The polarizing vaccine chief of the Food and Drug Administration leaves the agency after a brief mandate which attracted the anger of biotechnology companies, groups of patients and conservative allies of President Donald Trump.
Dr. Vinay Prasad “did not want to be a distraction” and withdrew from his role as the best FDA vaccination regulator “to spend more time with his family,” a spokesman for the Ministry of Health and Social Services said on Tuesday.
Two people familiar with the situation told the Associated Press that Prasad had been ousted following several recent controversies. People have spoken on condition of anonymity to discuss internal staff.
Prasad joined the FDA in May after years as a university researcher at the University of California San Francisco, where he frequently criticized the FDA approach to the approval of covid-19 drugs and vaccines.
Its opposite approach seemed to correspond to the FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, who has repeatedly praised the work and the intellect of Prasad.
But in recent weeks, Prasad has become the target of conservative activists, including Laura Loomer, who reported the previous statements of Prasad criticizing Trump and praising the independent liberal senator Bernie Sanders.
“How did this hatred of Trump Bernie Bro enter the Trump administrator ???” Loomer published on X last week.
Prasad also attracted a meticulous examination for its management of a recent security problem surrounding the only gene therapy approved for the muscular dystrophy of Duchenne.
Under his direction, the therapy expeditions were briefly interrupted after a series of patients’ deaths, then resumed late Monday following the vocal repression of families of boys suffering from the mortal muscle disorder.
Prasad has long been skeptical about therapy and other muscular dystrophy drugs sold by the drug manufacturer, Sarepta Therapeutics. As an agademic, Prasad has taken importance by attacking the FDA to be too forgiving in its standards to approve cancer drugs and other new therapies.
This approach is in contradiction with the republican supporters of Trump, who generally promote faster approvals and unhindered access to experimental treatments. During Trump’s first term, he signed the “right to try”, a largely symbolic legislation which won the popular support of the conservatives seeking to give dying patients access to unproven drugs.
Prasad’s decision to suspend Sarepta therapy was criticized last week by a columnist and the Wall Street Journal editorial committee.
In addition, the Prasad division has published letters of rejection this month to three small biotechnological businesses requesting the approval of new gene therapies.
The predecessor of Prasad in the role, Dr. Peter Marks, supervised a strong increase in approvals of new gene therapies, which aim to treat or prevent the disease by replacing or modifying part of the genetic code of patients.
Prasad was a frank critic from the management of Marks at the FDA. which included the supervision of the approval of the first vaccines and therapies covid.
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