Dr. Vinay Prasad, who is in charge of vaccines and biologic medicines at the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), will leave the agency at the end of April 2026. He has been a controversial figure. Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA Commissioner, told staff in an email that Prasad was leaving. He praised Prasad for speeding up drug reviews and only allowing COVID vaccine approvals for people over 65 or with risk factors.
Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist on leave from the University of California, San Francisco, started working for the FDA in May 2025. He quit less than three months later because allies like Laura Loomer put pressure on the White House to fire him, saying he was too liberal. He was quickly put back in charge and continued to run CBER, making decisions about gene therapies, drugs for rare diseases, and vaccines, such as rejecting and then accepting Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine.
While he was in charge, Prasad cut the number of clinical trials needed for some drug approvals down to one major study, started a quick review program for promising therapies, and made it possible for medicines to be made just for one person. In his staff note, Makary talked about these changes and said that Prasad was back in school after a productive sabbatical.
The resignation comes after disagreements over reviews of drugs for rare diseases and a recent press call from the HHS that criticized an experimental treatment for Huntington’s disease that Prasad was in charge of. Biotech leaders wanted him gone, and critics like Diana Zuckerman said his loose standards put public health at risk by allowing products that hadn’t been tested yet. There is still no successor.
