While U.S. policymakers are scaling back funding on mRNA vaccine research, Australia is accelerating investment in the technology. At the center of this effort is Moderna Inc., which is establishing an mRNA research and manufacturing footprint in the country and banking on decades of local expertise to bring new therapies to the clinic and serve as a regional hub for Asia Pacific.

GC Biopharma Corp. has filed an IND application with the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) for a phase I trial of GC-4006A, an mRNA vaccine candidate for COVID-19.

The second day’s meeting of the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) took up guidelines related to COVID-19 vaccines, of which an outspoken skeptic is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy – who in June fired all 17 members of ACIP and replaced them with names more to his liking.

The second day’s meeting of the U.S. CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) took up guidelines related to COVID-19 vaccines, of which an outspoken skeptic is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy – who in June fired all 17 members of ACIP and replaced them with names more to his liking.

South Korea’s Ministry of Food and Drug Safety approved Moderna Inc.’s Spikevax LP.8.1 vaccine as an updated shot for COVID-19 targeting the LP.8.1 variant, according to Moderna Korea’s announcement Sept. 1. The regulatory clearance comes days after the U.S. FDA accepted, on Aug. 27, Moderna’s supplemental BLAs for two of its COVID-19 vaccines, Spikevax and Mnexspike.

Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) secured 5.3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer Inc./Biontech SE and Moderna Inc., officially including the mRNA-based vaccines in the country’s national immunization program on Aug. 5.

The U.K. government has announced the latest measures to speed up and expand clinical trials, launching Be Part of Research, a central national register where people can search and sign up to take part in studies.

Three years after litigation started over technology used in an mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, Biontech SE is acquiring its adversary, Curevac NV, through an all-stock transaction valued at about $1.25 billion. The amount is lower than the $3 billion in backpay Curevac could win through the lawsuit if a low mid-single-digit royalty were awarded, Evercore ISI analysts Jon Miller and Umer Raffat said. But the legal uncertainty has weighed heavily on the company, which shed 30% of its workforce last July and sold off rights to two of its infectious disease vaccines.

Nervousness about the Trump administration’s attitude to vaccines has spurred the formation of the Vaccine Integrity Project, which has the aim of safeguarding the use of vaccines and ensuring vaccine policy “remains grounded in the best available science,” and is “free from external influence.”