Jason Mast

6 days ago | statnews.com | Megan Molteni |Jason Mast

Jay Tischfield prides himself on his long track record of cellular custodianship. As the founding director of the Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey at Rutgers University, he maintains one of the largest university-based DNA banks in the world — much of it, on behalf of the U.S. government.

6 days ago | statnews.com | Jason Mast

Insitro, the closely watched AI biotech from the Stanford professor and entrepreneur Daphne Koller, said Thursday it was laying off 22% of its staff, or around 60 people. It’s part of a series of cuts that have hit well-backed startups over the last couple years, amid a prolonged downturn in biotech fundraising. A few startups have shut down altogether. Others have slashed early stage research to conserve resources for their first clinical trials.

1 week ago | statnews.com | Angus Chen |Jason Mast

The National Cancer Institute, 87 years old and burnished with a $7 billion annual budget and a mission to curb America’s second-leading cause of death, is the largest institute in the National Institutes of Health. At first, the NCI seemed to emerge relatively less affected by the cuts, terminations, and policy changes that rocked federal health agencies in the early months of the Trump administration.

1 week ago | statnews.com | Lizzy Lawrence |Matthew Herper |Jason Mast

WASHINGTON — Vinay Prasad will be the next director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, overseeing the regulation of vaccines, gene therapies, and the blood supply. Prasad, previously an epidemiology professor at the University of California at San Francisco, has sharply criticized the medical mainstream, including the FDA, in the past.

1 week ago | statnews.com | Jonathan Wosen |Jason Mast

The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, billed as the nation’s largest hospital devoted solely to medical research, is struggling to carry out its mission of running clinical trials for the hardest-to-treat diseases amid growing disruptions from the Trump administration. Fewer patients are being treated, and some trials are lagging months behind due to reduced staffing and uncertainty, according to STAT interviews with 11 staff members and researchers affiliated with the center.