Dr Vinay Prasad, the top vaccine official at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is set to leave the agency for the second time in less than a year. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary announced the departure in an email to staff on Friday, stating that Prasad would return to his academic position at the University of California, San Francisco at the end of April.
Prasad's tenure has been marked by controversy, including decisions on vaccine reviews and specialty drugs for rare diseases. In July, he was briefly forced out after clashes with biotech executives, patient groups, and conservative allies of Donald Trump, but was reinstated within two weeks with support from Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and Makary.
Since joining the FDA last May, Prasad has taken a seemingly contradictory approach, advocating for faster drug reviews while imposing new warnings and study requirements for certain biotech drugs and vaccines, particularly COVID-19 shots. Last month, he refused to consider Moderna's application for a new mRNA-based flu shot, citing inadequate trial design. The FDA later reversed this decision after pressure from the White House.
Prasad succeeded Dr Peter Marks, who resigned in March after being given the choice to resign or be fired. Marks had played a key role in Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that developed and distributed COVID-19 vaccines. Before his FDA role, Prasad was a professor at UCSF and worked at the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health.
