April 4 (Reuters) - Peter Marks, the FDA's top vaccine

official ousted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the U.S. health

secretary's team sought nonexistent data to justify antivaccine

narratives, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Kennedy, a well-known vaccine skeptic, last week announced

plans to reshape federal public health agencies, including

cutting jobs of 10,000 employees and centralizing some functions

of the FDA, CDC and others under his purview.

Marks is the highest-profile exit at the FDA amid the Donald

Trump administration's overhaul.

According to the WSJ report, Marks said he did not want to

leave and sought to collaborate with the health secretary. Marks

sent a memo to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's acting

commissioner early in Kennedy's tenure that proposed listening

sessions on vaccines and making immunization information clearer

for parents and doctors.

In early March, Kennedy's team requested that Marks turn

over data on cases of brain swelling and deaths caused by the

measles vaccine - data that Marks said does not exist because

there have been no such confirmed cases in the U.S, the report

added.

In the report, Marks said Kennedy's team was also interested

in weakening regulation of unproven stem-cell treatments, which

are sold for diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to arthritis. He

proposed a new set of regulations that would keep rules vigorous

for risky treatments but more lenient for less risky therapies.

Marks said if these stem cells are made improperly they can

harm people.

New FDA Commissioner Marty Makary supported the decision to

topple Marks, the report said, citing people familiar with the

matter.

The FDA also sat on a vaccine application its staff

scientists had been poised to approve, missing a key deadline,

and Makary was involved in the decision to hold off on the

approval, the WSJ's report said, citing a person familiar with

the matter.

On Wednesday, Novavax ( NVAX ) said the FDA missed its

deadline for making a decision on the traditional approval of

the company's COVID-19 vaccine.

The HHS and Marks did not immediately respond to Reuters'

requests for comment.