Jason Mast

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Megan Molteni |Jonathan Wosen |Jason Mast

Directors of five National Institutes of Health institutes and at least two other members of senior leadership have been placed on administrative leave or offered new assignments since Monday, topping a list of hundreds of employees notified in the last 24 hours that they had lost their jobs as part of sweeping layoffs across federal health agencies.

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Ed Silverman |Jason Mast

The Trump administration’s enormous cuts to a global AIDS relief program threaten to upend the planned rollout of a groundbreaking HIV prevention drug that was expected to save countless lives. The medicine, lenacapavir, made by Gilead Sciences, has caused a stir because clinical trial data showed a single set of injections every six months could provide virtually complete protection against infection, a form of prevention known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or (PrEP).

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Jason Mast

Vence Bonham, acting deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, has been “unexpectedly” placed on administrative leave, he announced in an email to staff Monday evening. The move comes amid a wider shakeup of the National Institutes of Health by the Trump Administration. And it comes just two weeks after Eric Green, who ran NHGRI for 16 years, abruptly left, despite the agency having already begun the process of renewing him for another five-year-term.

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Jason Mast |Adam Feuerstein

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime and visceral critic of pharmaceutical and biotech companies, was nominated by President Trump to be the nation’s health secretary, the head of biotech’s largest trade group issued a statement saying that he had “every confidence” that the industry would “continue to thrive and deliver” on its goals, and looked forward to working closely with the new administration.

3 weeks ago | statnews.com | Matthew Herper |Helen Branswell |Usha Lee McFarling |Lizzy Lawrence |Jason Mast

Peter Marks, the top Food and Drug Administration official who oversaw vaccines, gene therapies, and the blood supply, resigned Friday after being told by Trump administration officials he would be fired if he did not step down, according to press reports and people familiar with the situation. In his resignation letter, which was obtained by STAT, Marks said that he had attempted to answer the concerns of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.