Trump’s administration halts mRNA vaccine development, sparking WHO fears for emerging pandemic preparedness.The decision by US President Donald Trump’s administration to terminate 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines is a major blow to a hugely promising platform, the World Health Organization said.“This is, of course, a significant blow,” WHO immunisation figurehead Joachim Hombach told the UN correspondents’ association ACANU on Thursday.The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announcement that it will wind down mRNA vaccine development activities under its biomedical research unit is the latest development under US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a long-time vaccine sceptic who has been making sweeping changes to reshape vaccines, food and medicine policies.“mRNA vaccines are a very important technology and platform which has served us extremely well for COVID. We also know there is very promising work going on in relation to influenza vaccines,” Hombach said. “From our perspective, the platform is particularly useful in relation to developing vaccines against emerging and pandemic threats, because these platforms can be very rapidly adapted.”Unlike traditional vaccines, which often use weakened or inactivated forms of the target virus or bacteria, mRNA shots deliver genetic instructions into the host’s cells, prompting them to produce a harmless decoy of the pathogen and train the immune system to fight the real thing.The US health department’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority is “terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investm …
