The Fragility Of Vaccine Markets

History suggests that with disruption of an already precarious vaccine market, companies will jump ship and vaccine shortages will result. The current distrust in vaccines is even worse than during the controversy over the whooping cough vaccines of the 1980s, which led vaccine manufacturers to leave the market, says Robert H. Hopkins Jr., an Arkansas doctor and the medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

“Reduction in pharmaceutical investment in vaccines is going to have serious consequences for the health of Americans,” Hopkins cautions.

Even during stable times, the pharmaceutical industry has a hard time justifying work on vaccines compared to the more profitable drugs for chronic diseases, said Jesse Goldman, a physician and professor at Georgetown University, in a briefing to the Association of Health Care Journalists. Goldman, previously the chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration, warned, “We are already seeing a chilling effect and the tip of the iceberg here.”

Health lawyer Hughes agrees that childhood vaccines aren’t big earners. Some companies stay in the vaccine space mainly for legacy reasons, not for major profits, he says. But staying depends on the predictability of vaccine demand, for instance, through routine childhood vaccination programs.

The public may have good reasons to distrust large pharmaceutical companies, some of which have engaged in profit-maximizing practices like recommending overly high dosages and finding loopholes for patent extension.

But Hughes is especially frustrated by the low trust in vaccine makers. “At the end of the day, we vaccinate to maintain herd immunity,” he says. “We vaccinate to protect population health.”

Who Is Most Affected

The current uncertainty actually makes it a good time for some large players to acquire other companies. Sanofi bought hepatitis B vaccine maker Dynavax at a discount in December.

On the other hand, small, emerging and non-partnered companies are more vulnerable. Already, small manufacturers of vaccines or vaccine tech have reported layoffs and factory cancellations.

Smaller biotech companies are dependent on venture capital and less able to absorb shocks, notes Jeff Coller, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a board member of the Alliance for mRNA Medicines, an industry advocacy group. “The VC money has been shying away from mRNA technologies in the United States,” Coller says. Indeed, venture financing for mRNA-based vaccines plummeted by 82% from 2023 to 2025. “That puts a huge strain on these smaller companies,” which Coller believes “are usually the ones that do the most innovation.”

Political winds have been particularly tough on mRNA technology. Adding precise sections of messenger mRNA to cells basically prompts them to create proteins, which can be targeted to fight viruses or tumors. This technology has been game-changing for vaccine production. It can generate vaccines within weeks rather than the months needed for egg-based flu vaccines, for instance. This speed is part of why mRNA-based vaccines saved millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the tech’s relative novelty is hurting it now. Critics distrust the safety of a process that introduces synthetic genetic material into the body (though it doesn’t change our DNA, and mRNA vaccines have been determined to be safe and effective). Under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Department has cancelled many research projects involving mRNA. These cuts have been so substantial that they can’t be fully replaced by mRNA-project funding from other U.S. government agencies like the Department of Defense.

An exception to the criticism is for oncology, which Hughes says is flying under the radar of the people in Kennedy’s orbit who don’t support routine vaccination. Indeed, an American company trialling mRNA-based tumor treatment raised $153 million in 2025. Moderna is continuing late-stage work on mRNA-based cancer treatments. And for pancreatic cancer, which is difficult to treat, an mRNA vaccine is showing promising early results.

A key distinction may be framing mRNA-based therapeutic vaccines as personalized treatments rather than vaccines, since the Make America Healthy Again movement views many vaccines with suspicion. In general, the FDA has been intensifying scrutiny of vaccines while loosening regulations on other products, in an approach that speeds treatment over prevention.

According to HHS Press Secretary Emily G. Hilliard in a statement provided to me, “HHS sees promise in mRNA technology for recurrence of hard-to-treat cancers, and Secretary Kennedy recently committed the National Cancer Institute at NIH to a public-private partnership to invest in research and clinical trials. Last year, HHS wound down its investments in mRNA vaccines for upper respiratory viruses because they do not protect effectively against infections from mutating strain of viruses such as COVID and flu. Also, these companies had already been massively subsidized by the government, and we decided to reinvest the money in other more promising technologies.”

Even with global vaccine sales on the rise, other markets can’t fill the void left by the U.S. The country accounts for over a third of all vaccine revenue, and two-thirds of mRNA-industry employees are in the U.S. The COVID-19 vaccine Kostaive, an mRNA-based vaccine that replicates itself within cells, has been approved outside the U.S., but within the U.S., it has been challenging to move forward under the current administration.

Even contract research organizations outside the U.S. are reporting that the funding, and thus their work, is pivoting toward cancer.

The Horizon Beyond

All this sounds rather dire for people supporting new vaccines. “There’s definitely a pullback,” acknowledges Glenn Rockman of Adjuvant Capital, a public health-focused venture capital firm. Part of the pullback is due to policy skepticism toward vaccines, but part of it is just cyclical, Rockman believes. It’s the bust following the recent spectacular boom of mRNA and adjacent technologies. Rockman remains convinced that vaccines will continue to be an essential part of public health — and a good long-term investment.

As for mRNA products specifically, Coller of the Alliance for mRNA Medicines takes heart from continued foreign investment. The American market, he believes, “while seeing these strong headwinds right now, I think will eventually correct their course and will come back to the use of this technology.”

Ipsita Smoinski, the managing director of the health policy consultancy Capitol Street, agrees that while the current picture is rough, “some people are playing the long game.” They may be keeping an eye on drugs that won’t reach the review stage for several years, at which point the political environment may be less hostile. “There’s the perspective of the investor who has a longer time horizon who says, ‘You know what? Maybe early-stage vaccine development will kind of materialize in several years, when maybe a lot of this MAHA movement may have dissipated.” This would depend on vaccine manufacturers staying the course until then.

In the shorter term, there may be ways for vaccine makers to shield themselves a bit from crusading regulation. They could target products at a narrower group of people, remove the additives that make vaccines more effective but have become political targets, move manufacturing to other countries, diversify their holdings or unbundle certain vaccines typically used in combination.

They could also simply replace the word “vaccine” with other terms, as has been common in the mRNA world. They could seek out partnerships with vaccine-positive governments, or even with military agencies within the U.S. that continue to fund infectious-disease research.

Some vaccine makers are already pursuing these strategies. But each tactic may carry its own risks to public health.

Coller remains hopeful that “despite the political challenges that are being faced, the science still ultimately wins.”