By Dean Seal
Shares of companies developing psychedelic treatments jumped while those of vaccine makers slipped after a Senate committee advanced the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department.
The controversial nominee has previously said he believes psychedelic drugs could be useful therapeutics and should be decriminalized.
Shares of Mind Medicine, the company better known as MindMed that is working on an LSD-based treatment for anxiety, were up 7.3% at $7.91 on Tuesday. Shares of Compass Pathways, which is developing a psilocybin product for depression, rose 9.9% to $4.74. Shares of ATAI Life Sciences, another developer of psychedelic therapies, surged 21% to $2.25.
Kennedy has been a vocal skeptic of vaccines and repeatedly made false claims that they cause autism. He has refused to walk the claim back even at the urging of Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.). Cassidy said he struggled with Kennedy's past comments on vaccines but nonetheless cast the deciding vote in favor of his nomination.
Shares of Moderna were down 5.2% to $34.65 while shares of Pfizer dropped 2% to $25.67, despite the company reporting better-than-expected fourth-quarter results Tuesday.
Shares of Novavax and BioNTech, two more vaccine companies, were down about 1% each.
A full Senate vote to confirm Kennedy hasn't been scheduled yet. He can afford to lose up to three Republican votes if all Democrats oppose him.
Write to Dean Seal at dean.seal@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 04, 2025 13:37 ET (18:37 GMT)
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