BARDA Director Rick Bright Leaves Agency Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

HHS has replaced Rick Bright as the director of the US agency charged with developing potential COVID-19 drugs and vaccines, according to national news sources.

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Bright has been moved to a new public-private partnership under the National Institutes of Health (NIH) after leading the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) since 2016, The New York Times reported yesterday. 

After starting his career in influenza vaccine and drug development at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Bright served as an advisor for the World Health Organization (WHO). He is an expert in vaccines and therapeutics and will oversee the acceleration of testing platforms for COVID-19 going forward.

Bright’s former deputy, Gary Disbrow, will take his place as acting director of BARDA. 

Under Bright’s leadership, BARDA has supported COVID-19 efforts, setting aside $5 billion to support vaccine development and allocating nearly $1 billion to major pharmaceutical companies to support their COVID-19 efforts. Bright has previous said BARDA intends to support up to six COVID-19 vaccines.

HHS noted that Bright will leverage his extensive experience and expertise in facilitating powerful public-private partnerships," saying he will now transfer those skills "as part of a bold plan to accelerate the development and deployment of novel point-of-care testing platforms," according to an emailed statement.

BARDA will continue to play a key role in combatting COVID-19 in the US. The agency has announced its support of many clinical trials for potential COVID-19 vaccines since the beginning of February. 

First, on February 4th, BARDA announced a partnership with Regeneron to develop an experimental treatment for COVID-19.  The company agreed to pay for 80 percent of research, development, and manufacturing costs for potential treatments. 

BARDA also announced its support for an HHS clinical trial in mid-March to uncover whether Kevzara, a rheumatoid arthritis drug, was an effective COVID-19 treatment. 

The partnership was among the first to be issued by BARDA thus far, with funding from the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2020 that President Trump signed into law early last month.

In the announcement, Bright emphasized that BARDA was working to speed development of therapeutic treatments for individuals with COVID-19. Repurposing drugs may be effective to make treatments available quickly, he said. 

In late March, Johnson & Johnson identified a lead COVID-19 vaccine candidate through its partnership with BARDA. BARDA announced it will commit more than $1 billion of investment of co-fund vaccine research, development, and clinical testing.  

The potential vaccine was discovered from constructs Johnson & Johnson has been working on since January through the expansion of its existing partnership with both BARDA and Janssen Pharmaceuticals. The Phase 1 human clinical trial will be initiated by September 2020 at the latest. 

Just before Rick Bright abruptly left HHS, Moderna Inc reported that it received a $483 million contract from BARDA to boost the development of its potential COVID-19 vaccine.  

The potential vaccine is currently being tested in an early-stage trial conducted by NIH. The mid-stage trial is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2020 and a late-stage study could begin as soon as fall of this year.

The fund will support the vaccine’s clinical development program and enhance manufacturing of the candidate, mRNA-1273.