The NIH will step back from fund­ing mR­NA re­search, claim­ing that too many peo­ple don’t trust the tech­nol­o­gy plat­form, the di­rec­tor said in a new ed­i­to­r­i­al.

The move by NIH Di­rec­tor Jay Bhat­tacharya pig­gy-backs on last week’s an­nounce­ment by HHS that it would cut fund­ing for two dozen con­tracts in­volv­ing mR­NA vac­cines. In a Wash­ing­ton Post ed­i­to­r­i­al Tues­day, Bhat­tacharya said the NIH would al­so piv­ot away from the tech­nol­o­gy.

His rea­son­ing fo­cused on what he claimed is lack of pub­lic trust in the tech­nol­o­gy, cit­ing a 2024 Pew study in­di­cat­ing that the ma­jor­i­ty of Amer­i­cans did­n't plan to get an up­dat­ed Covid-19 vac­cine. Those sur­vey re­sults di­verge sharply by par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion, and less so by age group, with De­moc­rats and old­er peo­ple more like­ly to say they plan to get the shots.

Bay Area biotech Cy­tomX on Wednes­day dis­closed de­tails of a pa­tient death from its ex­per­i­men­tal col­orec­tal can­cer drug "to ad­dress cer­tain re­cent so­cial me­dia posts."

A user on X sug­gest­ed a day ear­li­er that a tox­i­c­i­ty is­sue was to blame for a dip in the com­pa­ny’s stock price. On Tues­day, Cy­tomX's shares CT­MX fell 15%.

Cy­tomX said the death was due to acute kid­ney in­jury re­lat­ed to treat­ment, not­ing the pa­tient had a “com­plex med­ical his­to­ry in­clud­ing hav­ing a soli­tary kid­ney.” The fa­tal kid­ney in­jury was like­ly caused by nau­sea, vom­it­ing and di­ar­rhea.

Cy­tomX de­clined to com­ment be­yond the press re­lease.

The col­orec­tal can­cer pa­tient was part of a Phase 1 tri­al study­ing Cy­tomX’s an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate that tar­gets Ep­CAM, a pro­tein that helps cells stick to­geth­er but is over­ex­pressed in cer­tain can­cers.

The FDA is con­sid­er­ing re­vok­ing Pfiz­er's emer­gency use au­tho­riza­tion for its Covid-19 vac­cine for chil­dren aged 6 months through 4 years, the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment to End­points News.

"We are cur­rent­ly in dis­cus­sions with the agency on po­ten­tial paths for­ward and have re­quest­ed that the EUA for this age group re­main in place for the 2025-2026 sea­son," a Pfiz­er spokesper­son said. "It is im­por­tant to note that these de­lib­er­a­tions are not re­lat­ed to the safe­ty and ef­fi­ca­cy of the vac­cine which con­tin­ues to demon­strate a fa­vor­able pro­file."

An HHS spokesper­son told End­points the com­pa­ny's com­ment was "pure spec­u­la­tion."

Po­ten­tial changes to who can get Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech's mR­NA-based Covid vac­cine, if they go through, would align with oth­er re­cent re­stric­tions for Covid-19 shots that HHS has put in place since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the helm of the agency in Feb­ru­ary.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion­al cap­sule to treat ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis failed a Phase 2 test, Vedan­ta Bio­sciences an­nounced Wednes­day, in an­oth­er set­back for the mi­cro­bio­me field.

Vedan­ta said that its oral ther­a­py, VE202, did­n't achieve the pri­ma­ry end­point of en­do­scop­ic re­sponse in a tri­al called COL­LEC­TiVE202. It won't move for­ward with the ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­py and will cut 20% of its staff, or 23 em­ploy­ees, CEO Bernat Olle told End­points News in a phone in­ter­view on Wednes­day.

The place­bo-con­trolled study en­rolled 114 peo­ple with mild-to-mod­er­ate ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis. The com­pa­ny said it will present more de­tails on bac­te­r­i­al col­o­niza­tion, his­to­log­i­cal find­ings and im­mune re­spons­es in "fu­ture sci­en­tif­ic fo­rums."

The VE202 cap­sules com­prised 16 strains of bac­te­ria found in "the nor­mal hu­man in­tes­tine," Vedan­ta has said. The goal was to re­store nor­mal bac­te­r­i­al bal­ance in the in­tes­tine and re­lieve in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease.