At BIO 2026, FDA leadership emphasized workforce stabilization efforts after earlier staffing reductions, detailing plans to hire and retain personnel to reduce operational disruption. FDA acting directors and chief-of-staff officials highlighted recruiting, morale rebuilding, and retention as preconditions to execute upcoming initiatives. Separate reporting on the same theme indicates the FDA has already onboarded hundreds of new hires and is targeting additional recruitment on the order of 1,600 more, following losses of more than 3,000 staffers last year. The agency also connected staffing to backlog prevention and readiness for future submission processing needs, reinforcing that regulatory performance is now tightly coupled to institutional capacity.