Rotavirus vaccine,live(Merck & Co.)

iStock, Yutthana Gaetgeaw In his annual letter, Flagship Pioneering’s Noubar Afeyan lays out a choice between near-term “human-made miracles” and a reversion to the pain and suffering of past diseases due to “growing contempt” in the U.S. for the scientific method. Twenty twenty-five was a time of science generating “human-made miracles,” Flagship Pioneering CEO Noubar Afeyan wrote in his annual letter Monday. However, he added that he also believes the U.S. is “at risk of taking a sledgehammer to our miracle machine.” Attributing the term “man-made miracle” to a former head of state he met at UN General Assembly Week last fall, Afeyan said in his letter that the phrase stuck with him because “it is an apt description of what biotechnology, at its best, can do: miraculously consign to history some of the worst fates that befall humans – debilitating illnesses, devastating diseases.” The dignitary referenced Gilead Sciences’ twice-yearly HIV injection lenacapavir, according to Afeyan, who added a couple of his own human-made miracles to the list: the first-ever personalized CRISPR treatment , created for a nine-month-old boy named KJ with an ultrarare genetic condition, and clinical trials of organ xenotransplants engineered across species lines. As the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference gets underway in San Francisco, Afeyan issued a stark warning about the environment in which these “miracles” were made. “This past year, those conditions were under threat in the United States in ways I have never seen in my nearly 40 years in biotech, nor ever imagined I’d witness,” he wrote. Afeyan went on to cite proposed U.S. government budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, “slashed funding” for basic research, fewer grants in every area of science and medicine and the cancelation of thousands of existing projects. Indeed, in August 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services began a “coordinated wind-down” of nearly two dozen mRNA vaccine research projects under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. “Even more disastrous,” Afeyan wrote, “is the rejection of the academic scientific enterprise, the severing of its 70-year partnership with the U.S. government, and the growing contempt for the scientific method.” “Skepticism is an important part of the scientific method,” he continued. “Debate about approaches and outcomes is central to how science works. But what we are seeing is skepticism that has curdled into an across-the-board, corrosive doubt in the scientific method itself.” “If we lose our ability to collectively resolve our skepticism through the scientific method,” Afeyan concluded, “we won’t just slow the miracle machine, we’ll throw it into reverse.” Real-World Effects Afeyan pointed to the reappearance of measles as one example of this phenomenon. A deadly disease declared eliminated 25 years ago, measles could soon lose that status, he wrote, if the case numbers continue to climb. “The resurgence of measles is not the result of, say, a random genetic mutation,” Afeyan wrote in his letter. “It is the result of choices, policy decisions, to turn our backs on decades of science.” Vaccines Vaccine Investors Keep Their Heads Down as Trump Cuts Shot Schedule The US dramatically altered its recommendations for a series of vaccines, which drive billion-dollar earnings for giants like Merck and Pfizer. January 6, 2026 · 3 min read · Dan Samorodnitsky Afeyan is not the only scientific leader who has recently expressed concern about the potential for a reversal of scientific progress. After the U.S. federal government reduced the number of childhood vaccinations it recommends from 17 diseases to 11—leaving out shots for flu, rotavirus and more—medical experts eviscerated the decision . “If there’s a fairly rapid erosion in vaccine rates, I think you would immediately see children suffering preventable illness,” Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told The Atlantic , recalling the devastation rotavirus used to cause during his pediatric residency. Offit was part of the team that created a vaccine for the disease, RotaTeq, which was licensed in 2006. Afeyan concluded his letter by raising a parallel threat facing the U.S. biopharma sector: China. “At the same time that some in the U.S. are undermining the scientific method, the Chinese government has been investing heavily in it,” he wrote. In the past nine years, the number of novel medicines in China has increased eightfold, nearly equaling U.S. input, according to Afeyan. Between 2015 and 2018, the workforce at China’s drug regulator—the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA)—quadrupled, Afeyan added, allowing it to clear a backlog of 20,000 new drug applications in two years. He noted that the FDA reviews “only a few hundred new drug applications each year.” In contrast to China’s buildup, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy slashed some 3,500 positions at the FDA in a mass workforce overhaul soon after taking office, though this did not appear to have an impact on the rate of novel approvals granted by the agency in 2025. Special edition Deep Dive: Chinese Biotech Innovation Can’t Be Stopped In this deep dive, BioSpace investigates China’s rise as a biotech powerhouse. October 27, 2025 · 3 min read · Annalee Armstrong “If we continue to discredit and defund the scientific method,” Afeyan wrote, “the U.S. risks becoming an innovation desert, reliant on China for new medicines and technologies and helpless to protect our own people in times of crisis, ranging from biological warfare to the next pandemic.”

摘要：2026 年 1 月 6 日，美国联邦政府在特朗普总统要求下，单方面调整儿童常规疫苗接种建议，将覆盖疾病从 17 种缩减至 11 种，流感、新冠等疫苗不再强制推荐。这一政策变动冲击默克、辉瑞等药企营收，引发投资者谨慎情绪，同时遭到公共卫生界普遍反对。 政策突变：6 种疫苗改为 "个人选择" 美国 CDC 此前推荐儿童接种至少一剂新冠疫苗、两剂轮状病毒疫苗和一剂流感疫苗，如今这些均被移出常规接种清单，交由 "个人选择"。此外，默克旗下 HPV 疫苗 Gardasil 的推荐剂量从两针减为一针。 唯一保留的重要儿童疫苗推荐是肺炎球菌疫苗。瑞穗证券股权研究董事总经理萨利姆・赛义德指出，该领域市场规模超 80 亿美元，儿童相关营收占比约三分之二，对相关企业是利好消息。 药企影响：默克成主要受冲击者 此次调整对默克影响最为直接。其轮状病毒疫苗 RotaTeq 2024 年全球营收达 7.11 亿美元，Gardasil 则贡献约 22 亿美元收入。尽管 Gardasil 近期因美国市场定价上调和公共采购政策支持实现销量增长，但此前已受中国、日本等市场需求下滑影响，三季度海外销售额（不含中国）下降 2%-3%。 辉瑞的肺炎球菌疫苗 Prevnar 2024 年销售额 16 亿美元，得益于推荐政策保留，有望维持市场稳定。新兴企业 Vaxcyte 虽暂无获批疫苗，但其在研的 31 价肺炎球菌疫苗正瞄准这一赛道，与辉瑞、默克的 Capvaxive 展开竞争。 市场反应：投资者转向谨慎观望 BMO 资本市场分析师埃文・塞格尔曼表示，受本届政府立场及 CDC 疫苗咨询委员会频繁的反疫苗活动影响，投资者对疫苗板块的乐观情绪本就有限。"政策不确定性和行业逆风让投资者难以兴奋，疫苗不再是投资默克的核心驱动力。" 赛义德则认为，政策对不同疫苗区别对待的态度，可能缓解市场对疫苗股的悲观情绪，利好辉瑞、默克及 Vaxcyte 等企业。但当前反疫苗政策风向未改，多数投资者仍选择低调观望，转而寻找生物制药领域其他投资机会。 公共卫生界：谴责政策无视科学证据 公共卫生组织对此次调整齐声反对。美国传染病学会主席罗纳德・纳哈斯指出，在疫苗可预防疾病仍持续爆发的背景下修改接种计划，只会加剧家庭的困惑。 美国国家传染病基金会医学主任罗伯特・霍普金斯强调，当前已出现严重呼吸道疾病流行迹象，"此时推行缺乏明确证据支持的政策变动，时机并不合适"。 参考来源：https://www.biospace.com/policy/vaccine-investors-keep-their-heads-down-as-trump-cuts-shot-schedule 识别微信二维码，添加生物制品圈小编，符合条件者即可加入 生物制品微信群！ 请注明：姓名+研究方向！ 版 权 声 明 本公众号所有转载文章系出于传递更多信息之目的，且明确注明来源和作者，不希望被转载的媒体或个人可与我们联系(cbplib@163.com)，我们将立即进行删除处理。所有文章仅代表作者观不本站。