Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg will be replaced as FDA's acting drug center director by Dr. Mike Davis, who has been serving as deputy director, according to an email sent to agency staff Friday that was obtained by The Associated Press.
There's lots of uncertainty around how the Senate will find the bandwidth to confirm another FDA commissioner while it considers President Trump's nominees for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director and surgeon general. The FDA itself is also facing other key internal vacancies, including for directors of the centers overseeing drugs and biologics. And there are questions about whether a successor will continue efforts to streamline clinical trials and other regulatory actions.
“Marty is a great guy. He's a friend of mine. He's a wonderful man, and he's going to be off and the assistant, the deputy, is taking over temporarily,” Trump said. “He was having some difficulty, you know, he's a great doctor, and he was having some difficulty. But he's going to go on and he's going to do well.”
Prasad's tenure was generally marked by controversy, but he is departing amid a cluster of self-destructive decisions. Those include a shocking rejection of an mRNA vaccine (which was over the objections of agency scientists and quickly reversed); a demand for an additional clinical trial on a gene therapy for Huntington's disease, which was widely seen as moving the goalpost for the therapy; his startling choice to publicly attack the maker of that gene therapy, UniQure; and alleged abuse of FDA staff, who say he created a toxic work environment.