The brutal termination last month of almost half a billion dollars in US government contracts for research on mRNA vaccines has shaken scientists working inside and outside the industry. The cuts have made the country’s commitment to Nobel-Resppewinning technology, which is recognized for saving millions of lives during the COVVI-19 pandemic and is considered essential to combat viruses in the future.
However, all large-scale research on mRNA vaccines in the United States is not dismantled. Nature learned that, even if the United States Ministry of Health and Social Services (HHS) – led by the vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr – withdraws, the country’s army continues to finance parties of the same research.
Among the beneficiaries are programs developing vaccines against some of the deadliest pathogens in the world, including the virus which causes a crimed crime – Congo (CCHF), a disease transmitted by ticks which kills up to 40% of infected people. In the United States, the government considers such crucial research because these pathogens threaten not only soldiers deployed abroad, but could also trigger a global epidemic.
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“Many of us are at least relieved from the Ministry of Defense [DoD] Do not give up research on mRNA, “explains Amesh Adalja, specialist in infectious disease at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, Maryland.
However, he warns that HHS rejection of technology, combined with broader political fractures through the government, threatens to strengthen emerging infectious threats.
“The entire BioDefence structure is completely derailed,” explains Adalja. “I have never seen that he was disconnected like that.”
Turbulent time
Peter Berglund learned that the federal back vaccine program of his business was reduced in the same way as many other affected companies made in an August 5 advice from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda) of the HHS, which ordered an immediate closure of current studies. For Berglund, scientific director of the organic HDT in Seattle, Washington, the news was a punch, as he said colleagues during a conference on therapies based on RNA in Boston, Massachusetts, this month.
HDT had developed a new generation CCHF vaccine based on a form of RNA which can be copied inside cells. The company had obtained tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts, which he used first to test a shot in mouse and monkeys, then to start a human trial in Texas in July. The Barda memo has stopped everything next month.
But “it was mom,” said Berglund. “Then Dad calls.”
In a few days, Thad leaders heard project managers from the Dod’s Joint Program Executive Office (JPEO) for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense, which had co -financed research on the CCHF vaccine. The Tha was invited to restart his trial, the JPEO promising support through at least this first phase of clinical evaluation.
“It was so turbulent,” says Berglund. The financing of the DOD, although substantial, is lower than what had been originally promised in conjunction with Barda. “But, at least now, we can advance it through phase I” and worry about others later, “he adds.
A “restructuring” of resources
Other projects co -financed by the JPEO have also learned of financing reductions and the “restructuring of collaborations” in the advice of August 5. But their situation is less clear.
Earlier this month, Astrazeneca, a pharmaceutical company whose headquarters are in Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, began a human trial of two mRNA vaccines, despite the opinion. Everyone is designed to protect themselves from a different stump from avian flu. Clinical trial registers still list Barda and JPEO as collaborators.
A spokesperson for Astrazeneca refused to comment on the role of the United States government in the financing of the test against bird flu – who infected poultry and American dairy cattle and raising the spectrum of a human jumper. The JPEO did not respond to requests for comments.
In a statement, HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard challenged suggestions that the withdrawal of joint projects weaken the country’s pandemic preparation, writing that “Barda favors solutions based on evidence and ethically based.”
The JPEO and Barda had also jointly funded a vaccine program at a preclinical stage for the Moderna Biotechnology Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The mrnm shooting is addressed to the Marburg virus – a close relative but even more deadly from Ebola – which caused an epidemic earlier this year in northwestern Tanzania, causing ten dead. Neither Moderna nor his collaborator, the medical branch of the University of Texas in Galveston, responded to the emails of Nature Seeking comments on the project funding state.
Not all the RNA projects have behaved as well: those who have no joint support from the DOD were stopped.
At Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, for example, the biomedical engineer Philip Santangelo had used the edition of CrisPR genes to develop an unharble influenza therapy, delivered to lungs via mRNA. The DOD, through its defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), had provided more than $ 20 million to support development in the start -up phase, but this funding exhausted last year. A barda tracking contract was supposed to subscribe to the design and tests of a dry powder formulation which would be easy to administer in an emergency. With Barda Money Frozen, Santangelo says that it was forced to continue funding for foundations, non -profit organizations and other non -governmental entities.
Patchwork support
Santangelo is barely alone to seek ways to maintain research on mRNA on the right track. Other academics, sailing on a field of uncertainty mines as to whether American financing agencies will continue to financially support such work, always submit proposals for subsidies – but the term “ arnm ” is often cleaned, replaced by sentences such as “nucleic acid drugs” to achieve a meticulous examination.
However, some glimmer of hope remain. An expenditure package has progressed this month by an American committee of the House of Representatives orders Barda to support research on mRNAvaccin. And the DOD defense threat reduction agency (DTRA) has requested requests this year for reinvention of the next biodefent vaccine program. According to Karl Ruping, CEO of Tiba Biotech in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the DTRA program directors told him that the agency was open to supporting mRNA vaccines as long as they were progressing with the objective of more resilient bio -faces.
Apart from the establishment of defense, the American department of agriculture also maintains support for the development of mRNA vaccines, granting subsidies to projects targeting respiratory viruses that affect pigs, chickens and cows.
Overall, these programs reflect the commitment – but only in the pockets of the government, exposing a disturbing absence of coordination, explains Michael Osterholm, researcher and specialist in the biosecurity of the infectious division at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
For the moment, researchers can comfort themselves knowing that agencies outside the direct control of Kennedy draw a different course. But the influence of the HHS leader remains strong, and many fear that he will soon be able to shape politics throughout the federal agenda, including DOD. “I am not sure that it is the refuge for research on the mRNA that some associate with it,” explains Osterholm.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first publication September 24, 2025.
