GekeVenn: SANOFI

Note: All job titles come from OpenSecrets.org unless otherwise specified. Job titles for Eddie Evans and Richard Hodge came from their LinkedIn profiles.

Flu Vaccine Maker Cozy with Government

With the focus on this winter's flu and the skyrocketing profits from flu vaccines, it seemed a good time to produce an overlap venn of Sanofi, a French pharmaceutical company and the current leader in the flu vaccine market, consistently producing roughly 50 percent of the flu vaccine supply for the US.

Just last year, the company acquired Protein Sciences, the maker of Flublok, the only FDA-approved recombinant protein-based flu vaccine. Before being bought by Sanofi, Protein Sciences was awarded a pandemic preparedness contract by the Department of Health and Human Services' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to produce pandemic flu vaccines. The contract was awarded in September of 2016 and runs through 2021 with a potential of $610 million in total development grants.

But that wasn't Sanofi's only work with BARDA. Last fall, the company stopped developing its experimental Zika vaccine after the Health and Human Services authority stopped funding it. This occurred after American taxpayers had already paid $1 billion on Zika research. A few months prior to the halt in funding, Sanofi had refused a request by the US Army to set an "affordable" price for Zika in the US. The company was seeking an exclusive license to provide the Army with the vaccine.

According to the Institute for Vaccine Safety, Sanofi's Fluzone Quadrivalent contains a 0.01% Thimerasol concentration, which is equivalent to that of flu vaccines manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. Fluzone also contains 25 mcg/0.5mL of mercury, also equivalent to many competitors' products.

Only a few companies produce flu vaccines that are recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Sanofi is one of them. Information on Sanofi's Fluzone vaccine can be found on the US FDA and CDC websites.

The Sanofi venn diagram is limited to only those revolving-door lobbyists with connections to pertinent health-related government agencies or to financial or legislative decision-makers. There are, however, a total of 16 Sanofi lobbyists who have passed through Washington's revolving door to obtain positions working within the federal government.