Vinay Prasad to leave in April after decisions involving vaccine reviews and specialty drugs for rare diseases
The Food and Drug Administration’s embattled vaccine chief, Dr Vinay Prasad, is once again leaving the agency – the second time in less than a year that he’s departed after decisions involving the review of vaccinations and specialty drugs for rare diseases.
FDA commissioner Marty Makary announced the news to FDA staff in an email late Friday, saying Prasad would depart at the end of April. Makary said Prasad would return to his academic job at the University of California, San Francisco.
Prasad’s latest ouster follows a string of high-profile controversies involving the FDA’s review of vaccines, gene therapies and biotech drugs in which companies have criticized the agency for reversing itself, in some cases calling for new trials of products previously greenlighted by regulators.
In July, Prasad was briefly forced from his job after running afoul of biotech executives, patient groups and conservative allies of Donald Trump. He was reinstated less than two weeks later with the backing of health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and Makary.
