Rick Bright, the head of the Bio­med­ical Ad­vanced Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty and a lead­ing re­searcher on vac­cines and an­tivi­rals, is no longer run­ning the agency.

Bright’s sud­den de­par­ture, first re­port­ed by STAT, comes just as the agency, com­mon­ly called BAR­DA, has been thrust in­to the na­tion­al spot­light as it leads a na­tion­wide ef­fort to de­vel­op vac­cines and treat­ments for SARS-COV-2, the virus that caus­es Covid-19. Last week, the agency an­nounced an up-to $483 mil­lion agree­ment with Mod­er­na to help ush­er its vac­cine to ap­proval and scale up man­u­fac­tur­ing. That came af­ter an agree­ment with J&J to put $1 bil­lion — split be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the phar­ma com­pa­ny — be­hind their vac­cine ef­fort.

Bright will still have a role in the Covid-19 re­sponse, but it won’t be in de­vel­op­ing drugs or vac­cines. He will move in­to an un­spec­i­fied po­si­tion at the NIH to join an ef­fort to scale up di­ag­nos­tic test­ing for the virus, a spokesper­son for the De­part­ment of Health and Hu­man Ser­vices, which over­sees BAR­DA, said in an emailed state­ment. Gary Dis­brow, Bright’s for­mer deputy, will serve as act­ing chief.

“Bright will trans­fer the skills he has ap­plied as Di­rec­tor of the Bio­med­ical Ad­vanced Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (BAR­DA) to the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health, as part of a bold plan to ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment and de­ploy­ment of nov­el point-of-care test­ing plat­forms,” the spokesper­son said. “Dr. Bright brings ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­per­tise in fa­cil­i­tat­ing pow­er­ful pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships that ad­vance the health and well-be­ing of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”

The abrupt shake­up shocked those who have long watched and worked with the agency and who won­dered what pre­cip­i­tat­ed a ma­jor lead­er­ship shift in the midst of one of the worst bi­o­log­i­cal threats the US has faced in BAR­DA’s 14-year-his­to­ry. Al­though his­tor­i­cal­ly a small agency, the most re­cent stim­u­lus pack­age al­lo­cat­ed an ad­di­tion­al $1 bil­lion for Covid-19 work. Bright has led it since 2016.

“I would like to know why,” Amesh Adal­ja, a se­nior schol­ar of in­fec­tious dis­ease at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for Health Se­cu­ri­ty, told End­points News. “It’s hard to know what the im­pli­ca­tions are. Lead­er­ship changes in the mid­dle of the cri­sis of are of­ten more dif­fi­cult. I hope it doesn’t di­min­ish BAR­DA’s role.”

The move al­so re­newed ques­tions about the role pol­i­tics may be play­ing in the gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic. Al­ready, the FDA has faced crit­i­cism over its de­ci­sion to au­tho­rize use of a malar­ia drug long ad­vo­cat­ed by Pres­i­dent Trump over the ob­jec­tion of his top sci­en­tif­ic ad­vi­sors and ap­prove a clin­i­cal tri­al for a cell ther­a­py pushed by Trump’s per­son­al at­tor­ney Rudy Giu­liani.

The di­rec­tor of BAR­DA is not a Sen­ate-con­firmed po­si­tion. It an­swers di­rect­ly to the HHS as­sis­tant sec­re­tary for pre­pared­ness and re­sponse.

“I can­not imag­ine any­thing good com­ing from this loss of lead­er­ship at a cru­cial time in a plague,” Art Ca­plan, founder of NYU’s Di­vi­sion of Med­ical Ethics, said in an email to End­points. “But I do not know why he left. Pre­sum­ing pol­i­tics then it is moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble and ir­re­spon­si­ble in the ex­treme.”

Bright, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked in biotech and has ad­vised the WHO, joined the agency in 2010. Formed in 2006, in the wake of 9/11 and the sub­se­quent an­thrax scare, BAR­DA was de­signed to pro­tect the US against bio-threats, in­clud­ing bioter­ror­ism and po­ten­tial nat­ur­al out­breaks. Al­though lit­tle known be­fore the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, over the en­su­ing 14 years they hand­ed out gov­ern­ment con­tracts worth hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to build vac­cines and treat­ment for pan­dem­ic flu, Ebo­la and the Zi­ka virus, among oth­ers.

Last year, two of those ef­forts came to fruition with the ap­proval of a small­pox an­tivi­ral and an Ebo­la vac­cine. For­mer FDA chief Scott Got­tlieb, who en­tered his role short­ly af­ter Bright, praised his lead­er­ship dur­ing those ef­forts.

At BAR­DA, Rick Bright was an out­stand­ing part­ner to me, to FDA, and to our shared pub­lic health goals; in­clud­ing the ap­proval of a his­toric treat­ment for small­pox and a vac­cine for Ebo­la. I look for­ward to his con­tin­ued con­tri­bu­tions to ad­vance the health and safe­ty of our na­tion

— Scott Got­tlieb, MD (@ScottGot­tlieb­MD) April 21, 2020

The agency emerged as a key play­er ear­ly in the Covid-19 out­break, hand­ing out small­er con­tracts to long­time part­ners Re­gen­eron and Sanofi in Feb­ru­ary be­fore call­ing for new ap­pli­ca­tions and even­tu­al­ly promis­ing around $1 bil­lion.

Dis­brow, the new act­ing di­rec­tor, joined the agency months af­ter its in­cep­tion in De­cem­ber 2006 and be­gan work­ing on the small­pox vac­cine pro­gram. A for­mer as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of on­col­o­gy and pathol­o­gy at George­town Med­ical Cen­ter, he worked on an HPV vac­cine and re­ceived grants for de­vel­op­ing new vac­cine tech­nol­o­gy from the Bill & Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion. He has over­seen the bud­get for Pro­ject BioShield, a long-run­ning gov­ern­ment ef­fort to pur­chase vac­cines for use in a po­ten­tial bio-ter­ror at­tack.

Matthew Wat­son, a se­nior an­a­lyst for the Hop­kins Cen­ter for Health Se­cu­ri­ty, said that while the sud­den change could in­ter­rupt the agency’s work, Dis­brow was well-suit­ed for the role.

“Lead­er­ship tran­si­tions can be dis­rup­tive, and for this to be hap­pen­ing in the midst of a pan­dem­ic cer­tain­ly isn’t ide­al,” Wat­son said in an email to End­points. “That said, it’s re­as­sur­ing that Dr. Gary Dis­brow will be tak­ing on the role of BAR­DA di­rec­tor on an act­ing ba­sis. He’s well-known in the com­mu­ni­ty and is a vet­er­an of MCM R&D.”

For a look at all End­points News coro­n­avirus sto­ries, check out our spe­cial news chan­nel.

Harith Rajagopalan compared the way type 2 diabetes is managed to sticking your fingers in a dam that’s leaking from a number of places.

You can take drugs to lower your blood sugar, cholesterol, or blood pressure, but you’re not addressing what he says is the core issue — the metabolic abnormality that causes the disease.

“We’re so busy plugging the holes in the dam, we don’t have time to see that the whole infrastructure is at risk,” he said. “That infrastructure is a full-body systemic metabolic abnormality called metabolic syndrome, that we’re ignoring while we’re so busy trying to treat all of the individual symptoms of the condition.”