The Department of Health and Human Services is reevaluating a $590 million contract for avian influenza mRNA vaccines that the prior administration struck with Moderna, Bloomberg first reported on Wednesday.
The move comes as bird flu continues to spread throughout chickens and dairy cows, occasionally jumping into humans as well.
“While it is crucial that the U.S. Department and Health and Human Services support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production,” an HHS spokesperson told Fierce Biotech in an email.
A Moderna spokesperson declined to comment.
The reevaluation is part of a broader move by the new administration to scrutinize spending on mRNA vaccines, Bloomberg added. During the pandemic and afterward, mRNA became a hot new modality in vaccine development after the approach led to the speedy development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines on a massive scale.
Two scientists whose work served as the foundation for the technology won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023.
The Biden administration granted the money to Moderna in its waning days, a continuation of past efforts from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to develop effective vaccines for the highly pathogenic bird flu before it potentially becomes a more serious human pathogen. Moderna received $176 million as part of the same initiative last year.
The funding was meant to help Moderna run two phase 3 studies of its mRNA vaccine against different strains of bird flu, as well as bring four new influenza vaccines into phase 1 trials. It was not immediately clear how the potential loss of the funding would affect Moderna’s vaccine development.
In December 2024, Moderna reported that its vaccine candidate was able to protect ferrets against bird flu, including a strain that had been isolated from a human case in Texas.
There have been 70 confirmed human cases of bird flu in the U.S., with the disease also sweeping through 973 cow herds in 17 states. The virus is also a major contributor to the current egg shortage, with the Trump administration announcing a $1 billion funding plan to combat the crisis in poultry production on Feb. 26, per a report from Forbes.
Moderna share price dropped by about 4% on Thursday morning in the wake of the Bloomberg report.