NIH, Women’s Health Initiative, annual flu deaths

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Hi, Morning Rounds editor Karen Pennar, back again. First off, an update to Friday’s newsletter item on NIH’s freeze of subawards to foreign scientists: Megan Molteni has learned that privately, NIH leadership is making it clear that the moves are part of a broader America First agenda that seeks to dramatically reduce U.S. participation in international science. Beyond that, we’ve got a whole platterful of interesting, even fascinating (how a new snake antivenom was developed) news for you to start the week out right. Oh, and here’s some really good news — Theresa Gaffney’s back helming this newsletter tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Experts question $500M NIH project that would use ‘a 70-year-old technology’

Scientists who design vaccines or study how well they work have conflicted thoughts about the announcement that the NIH will spend half a billion dollars on an in-house project to develop a new vaccine platform that could be used to make vaccines to protect against pandemic threats like influenza and coronaviruses. Recognition of the need is welcome. But the approach that scored the big grant? Many have their doubts it is up to the challenge.

The research, led by two scientists who have risen to roles of prominence in the Trump administration’s NIH, uses a decades-old approach to making vaccines based on whole killed viruses — the method Jonas Salk used in the early 1950s to make the first polio vaccine. Though some vaccines are still produced this way, developments in the intervening decades have generated newer methods that have resulted in vaccines that are quicker to make and easier to take — causing fewer side effects. “There is incredible work going on. This is not it,” one scientist told STAT. Read more here. — Helen Branswell 

Ambitious charity aims to build new model for gene therapies

For years, researchers finding ways to treat rare and ultra-rare diseases have hit a wall when the time comes to try and get their cures from the lab to patients: There’s no reasonable business model for making gene therapies for which there is only limited demand.

Now, a Milan-based charity is trying to develop a new model to deliver therapies that drugmakers cannot, writes Andrew Joseph. Telethon Foundation, which has funded research to develop medicines for genetic disease, last year took ownership from a small biotech of a drug that has been approved in Europe to treat an ultra-rare immune disorder called ADA-SCID. Since taking over the therapy, the charity has had to remake itself, building up regulatory and medical affairs teams, and the journey has not been an easy one. Read more from Drew about charity, its long hospital collaboration, and the new model for drug development the people involved are working toward.

How a snake enthusiast is helping develop a universal antivenom

Some 100,000 people die from snakebites each year, largely in the developing world, while up to 400,000 suffer amputations or permanent disability. In fact, snakebite envenoming is considered a neglected tropical disease by the WHO. For now, different snakes in different regions require different and unique antivenoms.

That’s what makes the search for a universal antivenom so appealing, and the tale of a snake enthusiast who’s subjected himself to hundreds of snake bites so intriguing. Usha Lee McFarling has the details on how researchers studied the billions of antibodies coursing through the snake handler’s blood to develop a cocktail that protects against multiple venoms, an advance reported in Cell on Friday. Read more from Usha.

Pediatric flu deaths this season the highest in 15 years

This past flu season was a particularly difficult one, with influenza deaths surpassing those caused by Covid-19 at points in the season for the first time since the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged in 2020. Though flu’s toll was hard on all ages, it was particularly tough on kids. The CDC reported on Friday that the death toll for children has reached 216, the highest regular season total since the CDC started counting pediatric flu deaths after the difficult 2003-2004 season. (Prior to that pediatric flu deaths were estimated, as adult flu deaths are.) The only time it was higher was in 2009-10, during the h2N1 pandemic, when 288 pediatric deaths were recorded.

The current year’s total isn’t likely the end of the story. It can sometimes take weeks or months for states to report a death to the CDC, so it’s quite possible this tally will continue to climb. The CDC doesn’t report on whether children who died were vaccinated against flu. But in the past it has estimated that about 80% of the children who succumbed to flu were not vaccinated. And flu vaccine uptake in kids has declined since the Covid pandemic. — Helen Branswell

The nutrition experts to follow as food comes into focus at HHS

In his first months as health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed state efforts to make soda ineligible for food benefits, announced that the federal government had persuaded food and beverage manufacturers to voluntarily stop using eight petroleum-based dyes, and criticized a report meant to inform the next update of U.S. dietary guidelines. Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement aims to fix the problem of chronic disease in the U.S., and a focus on food and diet is a large part of that effort.

Nutrition experts who can separate the wheat from the chaff have become essential resources for understanding the impact that Kennedy’s reforms might have on pressing chronic illnesses like obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. Sarah Todd profiles five experts to follow to get a handle on what MAHA’s food moves really mean for the future of health, and what targets the movement may turn to next.

Women’s Health Initiative — and its 42,000 volunteers — still in limbo

They’re still waiting. Principal investigators leading regional centers contributing research to the long-running, practice-changing Women’s Health Initiative still have no official confirmation that their funding will continue past September. The WHI stalemate persists despite health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calling the cuts “fake news” and funder National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute saying “the work of the WHI will not be terminated.”

So what’s the problem? Contract officers from the NHLBI’s Office of Acquisition are operating on the April decision to cut off funding. “Nothing has changed contractually,” a federal official told Garnet Anderson, who leads the WHI’s coordinating center, last week. STAT has requested comment from NHLBI.

More than 42,000 participants are still active in more than 30 studies built on the original WHI infrastructure, which in 2002 famously halted hormone therapy for safety reasons. Over the years researchers have continued to collect annual health updates from participants, including medical record data that allow scientists to understand disease at a detailed level. If the studies end, Anderson told STAT, “Our personal connection to these remarkable women would be diluted.” — Liz Cooney

What we’re reading

• Opinion: The Trump administration’s reckless approach to extreme weather, STAT
• How much should doctors dwell on risks? Slate
• Jeremy Renner and the science of extraordinary near-death experiences, NYT
• Exclusive: Hospital and patient groups ramp up opposition to Medicaid cuts as House mulls options, STAT
• Surgeons bid for medical first: Removing spinal tumor through patient’s eye, Washington Post
• The hardest decision I ever made for my son, Public Source