In a new collaboration with the U.S. government, Sanofi becomes the second global pharma to create a vaccine against the novel coronavirus. And the French company is starting from an advantageous position thanks to earlier work by a biotech it acquired in 2017.
The French drugmaker is joining with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ BARDA unit to develop a recombinant DNA vaccine based on prior research conducted by Protein Sciences, a flu vaccine biotech Sanofi acquired in 2017.