US government pulls plug on programs critical to HIV vaccine studies: What does that mean

In a move that’s raising a lot of eyebrows in the health world, the Trump administration just pulled the plug on a major HIV vaccine research program. We’re talking about a $258 million initiative that played a key role in finding a potential vaccine for HIV—gone.

And it doesn’t stop there. This is just the latest in a string of cuts that have hit HIV prevention and treatment efforts pretty hard, both in the U.S. and around the world. Public health experts aren’t holding back—they’re calling this a big step backward in the decades-long fight against HIV, the NY Times reported.

So, what exactly happened? For starters, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) also hit the pause button on a clinical trial of an HIV vaccine developed by Moderna. Yep, that Moderna—the same company that helped bring us a COVID-19 vaccine in record time. "The cuts will shutter two major HIV vaccine research efforts that were first funded by the NIH in 2012 at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and the Scripps Research Institute, multiple scientists said. A spokesperson for Moderna said the vaccine manufacturer's clinical trials through the NIH's HIV Vaccine Trials Network have also been put on pause," CBS News reported.

And that’s not all. The CDC’s HIV prevention division? Shut down. This was the department that gave states and territories funding to help stop outbreaks and educate communities. Without it, many local programs are scrambling to figure out how to keep going.

The timing of this decision
The cancellation of the HIV funds comes weeks ahead of the US Food and Drug Administration's deadline (June 19) for deciding on approval of Gilead's lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable drug to prevent HIV. Recent clinical trials have demonstrated lenacapavir's remarkable efficacy. In the PURPOSE 1 trial involving cisgender women in sub-Saharan Africa, the drug achieved 100% efficacy in preventing HIV infections. Similarly, the PURPOSE 2 trial, which included cisgender men, transgender individuals, and gender-diverse people across multiple countries, reported a 96% reduction in HIV incidence compared to background rates. "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted its New Drug Application (NDA) submissions for lenacapavir—the company’s twice-yearly injectable HIV-1 capsid inhibitor—for the prevention of HIV as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)," the pharma company had said in February 2025.

So why does this matter? Because even though a lot of progress has been made, HIV is still a big issue in the U.S. According to the CDC’s April 2024 report, the number of new HIV infections did go down by about 12% between 2018 and 2022—which is good news! But it is still seeing 31,800 new cases a year. That’s not nothing.

And here’s a breakdown of where and who it’s hitting the hardest:

About 67% of those new infections were among gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men.
Around 22% of infections happened through heterosexual contact.
The South is taking the biggest hit—nearly half (49%) of all new HIV cases in 2022 came from Southern states.

So yes, it’s still a serious public health issue, especially in communities that already struggle with access to health care.

What worries experts most is that these cuts could completely unravel years—decades, even—of progress.