Some of the stud­ies that un­der­pin the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s de­ci­sion to veer away from mR­NA vac­cine re­search are be­ing mis­ap­plied, co-au­thors of the work say, mud­dling the move by HHS Sec­re­tary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to back away from the tech­nol­o­gy.

End­points News reached out to au­thors rep­re­sent­ing more than 100 ci­ta­tions pro­vid­ed by the gov­ern­ment af­ter near­ly two dozen con­tracts re­lat­ed to mR­NA vac­cines were cut two weeks ago. At least a dozen au­thors said that HHS and Kennedy ei­ther mis­in­ter­pret­ed their find­ings out­right, or em­pha­sized that re­search in­to the plat­form should con­tin­ue. On­ly a cou­ple of re­searchers con­tact­ed by End­points ap­peared to sup­port the gov­ern­ment’s pull­back in fund­ing. Most did not re­spond when con­tact­ed about their re­search be­ing in­clud­ed and whether they felt it was be­ing ac­cu­rate­ly ap­plied.

The FDA re­ject­ed PTC Ther­a­peu­tics’ Friedre­ich’s atax­ia drug va­tiquinone, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Tues­day morn­ing.

The agency said that “sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence of ef­fi­ca­cy” was not shown for the Friedre­ich’s atax­ia ther­a­py, ac­cord­ing to PTC’s press re­lease. An ad­di­tion­al “ad­e­quate and well-con­trolled” study would be need­ed for a re­sub­mis­sion to the FDA.

Va­tiquinone failed its piv­otal study in Friedre­ich’s atax­ia in 2023, but the com­pa­ny point­ed to mea­sures that sug­gest­ed the ther­a­py could im­prove bal­ance and fa­tigue in ask­ing the FDA for ap­proval.

In Friedre­ich’s atax­ia, pa­tients lack the pro­tein fratax­in, which is key for the mi­to­chon­dria to func­tion prop­er­ly. Va­tiquinone is a small mol­e­cule drug that's de­signed to ad­dress that mi­to­chon­dr­i­al dys­func­tion and ox­ida­tive stress by block­ing an en­zyme called 15-lipoxy­ge­nase.

Ex­ports of chem­i­cal prod­ucts, which in­clude phar­ma goods, from Ire­land to the US dropped in June to the low­est they've been in a year, fol­low­ing months of drug stock­pil­ing by phar­ma com­pa­nies.

Ire­land ex­ports of chem­i­cals to the US de­creased to €3.2 bil­lion ($3.7 bil­lion) in June, com­pared to the €9.4 bil­lion ($11 bil­lion) re­port­ed in May, ac­cord­ing to Fri­day da­ta from Ire­land’s Cen­tral Sta­tis­tics Of­fice.

The de­crease fol­lows months of in­creased phar­ma im­ports in­to the US. In par­tic­u­lar, com­pa­nies rushed to stock­pile their US drug in­ven­to­ries in March to cush­ion any short-term tar­iff im­pact. In that month, Ire­land chem­i­cal ex­ports spiked to €23.9 bil­lion ($27.9 bil­lion). Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump start­ed to threat­en phar­ma-spe­cif­ic tar­iffs in Feb­ru­ary.

While Ire­land-US phar­ma trad­ing pat­terns seemed to ease in April, ex­ports rose slight­ly again in May.

HHS has asked a Rhode Is­land fed­er­al court to dis­miss a case brought by at­tor­neys gen­er­al from 19 states and Wash­ing­ton, DC, over the gov­ern­ment’s plan to re­struc­ture fed­er­al health agen­cies.

At­tor­neys for HHS on Fri­day ar­gued that “plain­tiffs’ claims fail on nu­mer­ous thresh­old grounds,” in­clud­ing that they lack stand­ing to chal­lenge the re­struc­tur­ing and re­duc­tions in force. HHS al­so said that “set­ting aside these thresh­old and ju­ris­dic­tion­al de­fects, plain­tiffs’ claims fail on the mer­its.”

“The de­part­ment has stat­ed that the re­struc­tured agency will con­tin­ue car­ry­ing out its statu­to­ry func­tions,” the HHS at­tor­neys wrote in the mo­tion. “Just be­cause it is not do­ing so in the way plain­tiffs pre­fer does not mean it is vi­o­lat­ing ap­plic­a­ble law.”