Less than a day into his second term, President Donald Trump ordered a freeze on communications at major public health agencies, among other moves that have sent waves through the biopharma industry.
Panic rippled through the life sciences industries this week as newly inaugurated President Donald Trump ordered officials from the Department of Health and Human Services to stop communications, hiring and travel. At the National Institutes of Health, grant review panels were cancelled at the last minute, while at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, public health publications were paused and certain external meetings aborted.
As for the FDA, there has been no immediate news of the impacts of the communications freeze, but social media is ablaze with concerns that the agency will be restricted from sending out public notices on critical information regarding infectious disease outbreaks, food recalls and new drug approvals.
When contacted by BioSpace, the FDA downplayed any concerns, simply stating that the order exempts “mission critical” operations and noting that these decisions are “made on a case-by-case basis.”
“HHS has issued a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health,” an FDA spokesperson wrote in an email. “This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization.”
But this is only one decision that has some in the biopharma industry on edge. Another major development in Trump’s first week is his announcement on his very first day in office that the U.S. would withdraw from the World Health Organization—a decision Leerink Partners analysts were critical of.
“We view the news as disappointing for prevention of disease, because the WHO plays a key role in establishing international standards, providing guidance, and supporting worldwide vaccine adoption,” the Leerink team wrote in a note to investors on Tuesday. While it remains to be seen just how this will play out, the analysts continued, “[t]he news is negative for perception of vaccine manufacturers.”
Vaccine makers already took a hit last year after Trump announced his intention to nominate vocal vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS. At that time, Moderna’s shares fell almost 7% while Pfizer’s dropped a notable 4.5%.
At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference last week, the potential impact of Trump and his administration were much discussed but largely minimized, with many biopharma leaders expressing mostly neutral or even positive opinions of the then-incoming president. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, for instance, speculated about “radical change” that could benefit the company’s oncology business.
“Bourla specifically highlighted increased opportunity in oncology where the Trump admin appears to be more open to potential programs to improve investment,” BMO Capital Markets analysts wrote to investors on Monday.
Even when it comes to RFK Jr.—whom Bourla said has “a stance on vaccines [that] is antithetical to the U.S. Healthcare System,” according to BMO—the Pfizer CEO said he expects insurers, patients and manufacturers “all to be resistant to substantive changes that could negatively impact access to vaccines,” the BMO group wrote.
This sentiment echoes what biopharma industry leaders and investors said after Trump first tapped RFK Jr. as the potential new HHS head. Moderna, for example, noted at the time it was confident that Kennedy would not cause undue harm to their business. Interestingly, the company’s stock has jumped from around $35 at the end of last week to nearly $45 at the open of business Friday morning.
Diversity Initiatives At Risk
In addition to the freeze on communications, hiring and travel at HHS and proposed U.S. withdrawal from the WHO, Trump made another big move that could affect the drug development sector when he signed an executive order to recognize only two sexes: male and female. This new legal definition, if adopted, would essentially fail to recognize some 1.6 million transgender and nonbinary Americans.
Following the NIH’s 2016 recognition that sexual and gender minorities generally have worse health than the general population—transgender people are at higher risk of HIV, for example—the agency has pushed to fund more research projects on transgender and nonbinary people, STAT reported this week. Now, the future of those projects is unclear, as Trump’s executive order instructs federal agencies to “take all necessary steps, as permitted by law,” to end funding for any project that explicitly acknowledges the existence of gender identity.
At the time of STAT’s publication, the webpages of the NIH’s Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office and the Sexual & Gender Minority Health Scientific Research Group had been removed.
Perhaps relatedly, the Trump administration has also started removing pages related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts from the websites of the FDA and other government agencies, according to additional reporting from STAT. These include pages on the importance of ethnic and economic diversity in clinical research. In June 2024, the FDA released draft guidance on ensuring more people of color and women are enrolled in trials—yet another item whose future is now up in the air.
It’s been a wild first week of Trump in office with lots of confusion and speculation, but it will be a waiting game to see how it all plays out. For now, I’m sticking with my conclusion from shortly after the election that the new administration “will make for great reality TV but an uncertain biopharma environment.” One thing is for sure: We will keep watching.
