Buying vaccine biotech Dynavax was an easy choice for Sanofi despite antivaccine moves by the Trump administration.
“It’s a good time to do vaccine BD and M&A,” according to Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson.
While vaccine sentiment is suffering amid the Trump administration’s rhetoric, Hudson says he’s playing the long game with Sanofi’s acquisition of Dynavax.
“With the uncertainty, if you’re a short-term thinker, you don’t move. If you’re a long-term thinker—which is what we have to be—then there are less people to compete against to make acquisitions,” Hudson told reporters at a media breakfast in San Francisco on day three of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.
To end 2025, Sanofi offered $2.2 billion to buy Dynavax. The center of that deal is the hepatitis B vaccine Heplisav-B. That the vaccine is for adults could help Sanofi overcome some of the vaccine hesitancy that is rising, particularly in America, Hudson said. “We know that the sensitivities are less in the adult context.”
And it was those sensitivities that set the stage for the French drugmaker to pay what Hudson called an “appropriate price” for Dynavax. Elsewhere on the company’s business development (BD) bingo card, he also pointed to Sanofi’s July 2025 acquisition of Vicebio for $1.6 billion, scooping up a combination vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and human metapneumovirus (hMPV).
“Those things will launch 5, 6, 7, 8 years from now. And so we have to assume that there’ll be a new administration or two between now and then,” Hudson said. “We don’t know what their sensitivities will be, but it’s okay, as long as there’s some objectivity in the regulator.”
Hudson hinted that there could be more deals to come in the vaccine space.
Sanofi’s legacy vaccine sales fell 8% in the third quarter and Hudson is predicting similar “softness” in the quarters to come. Hudson reiterated that the sales decline can be pinned on the “misinformation that is going around.” He noted the rise in measles cases as people opt out of vaccines.
“We think it will settle down and we’ll move through it,” Hudson said. Sanofi has not provided guidance for 2026 yet.
Hudson also spoke to recent vaccine schedule updates and other antivaccine actions at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The CEO suggested that people are capable of educating themselves when it comes to vaccines in partnership with their care providers.
“The vast majority of people understand the benefit of vaccines and their lives and generations of their family have been protected that way,” Hudson said. “Not everybody looks to the top of the HHS to get people with their guidance on how to live their lives.”
He continued: “So I think people should be respectful of all guidance given, but I think talking to their own healthcare professional is still probably the best thing to do.”
The Next Moment
Vicebio and Dynavax’s programs may be years out from FDA review, but Sanofi’s flu-COVID combo, licensed from Novavax, is not. Hudson expects regulatory review to happen in 2027 or 2028.
That shot is “going to be the next moment, I think, for an acceleration on vaccine utilization,” Hudson said. The product will offer convenience with a one-and-done approach for both infectious diseases. And it will be the only non-mRNA COVID shot available in the U.S. for those who do not want to receive a shot featuring that technology.
“We think people are still very vaccine literate. We think they understand the reactogenicity or the tolerability challenges of mRNA,” Hudson said. Those post-vaccine reactions may have been tolerated during the global pandemic, but that’s not the case anymore, the CEO explained. He expects Sanofi will garner the over-55 and over-65 markets, particularly as the combo can offer a high dose needed for older people, who are at higher risk of death from the flu.
“While there may be debates on Facebook and other places, the over-65s, I think, are highly motivated to get protected,” Hudson said, “because they know they are the ones that are most vulnerable.”
