How Regulatory Shifts are Impacting the Vaccine Environment

In January of this year, Novavax announced a partnership that would provide its Matrix-M adjuvant technology to Pfizer for use in vaccine development. Pfizer reportedly paid an upfront total of $30 million, with an additional $500 million agreed upon based on development and commercial milestones.

At the 2026 JP Morgan Healthcare conference, Novavax CEO John Jacobs said, ““This company is no longer about one product or one season. It’s about building a sustainable engine for value creation built on technology, discipline, and long-term partnerships.”

This news came during a period of regulatory uncertainty surrounding vaccines. Due to abrupt leadership changes at HHS, ACIP was forced to cancel its February meeting this year. In 2025, incoming HHS Secretary Kennedy fired the previous council and replaced the members with his own picks.

However, this hasn’t stopped vaccines from being developed and approved. In May of this year, FDA’s advisory panel voted to update COVID-19 vaccine shots to target the XFG variant. This update includes the vaccine developed in partnership with Novavax and Sanofi.

Silvia Taylor spoke with Pharmaceutical Executivex about the current vaccine landscape and how new technologies are allowing more players to enter the space and develop new therapies. She also discussed the regulatory landscape and how vaccine developers are working around any potential issues.

Pharmaceutical Executive: How are policy and regulatory shifts impacting vaccines?
Silvia Taylor: The policy environment right now is dynamic and complex. Certainly, in vaccines, the policy environment is incredibly important. What a lot of people don't understand is that in the biopharma industry, you must develop a product and have it approved, but in vaccines policy drives how people are actually able to utilize that vaccine.

Who should take a vaccine? How should providers administer a vaccine? Under what circumstances? How often? Those are the things that are controlled by policy decisions.

Policy is a really, really important component of what happens in vaccines. As I mentioned, what we've seen is that certainly there have been some challenges in the regulatory environment, including everything from the way vaccines and other medicines go through the regulatory process, and then how decisions get made about how approved vaccines are actually utilized.

As part of my work at Novavax, I lead our government affairs and an advocacy effort. The idea of ensuring a positive and productive regulatory environment and policy framework for all of the work that we have to do is really, really important.

Despite the fact that the landscape has been a bit challenging, we have been able to move forward in the important work of getting vaccines to people. Despite the headlines and the fact that it may be a little bit more challenging to get done what we need to get done, it's still getting done.

What I worry about are long-term challenges to public health and trust in science eroding over the long term, so those are the issues that remain that we as an industry really have to work on.