A U.K. marketing watchdog has sanctioned Sanofi after ruling its CEO Paul Hudson may have undermined the U.K. government’s vaccine program by making “bold claims” about a procurement choice.
Pfizer triggered the investigation by contacting the PMCPA about an article the Observer newspaper ran in 2024. In it, Hudson was quoted as saying Beyfortus, Sanofi’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) product, should be considered instead of Pfizer’s vaccine Abrysvo. Uptake of maternal vaccines such as Abrysvo is very low, and Hudson claimed at the time that the government had chosen Pfizer’s shot on financial—not clinical—grounds.
The article led Pfizer to contact Sanofi. The companies failed to resolve their disagreements by February 2025, when the Sunday Express and the Health Service Journal ran articles that Pfizer said made “the same inappropriate promotional and disparaging claims” as the Observer story.
Writing to the PMCPA, Pfizer said the three articles “represent a deeply concerning concerted attempt to promote Beyfortus to the public, to make inappropriate and unsubstantiated superiority claims against Pfizer’s RSV vaccine and to disseminate disparaging messaging to the public regarding the government’s national immunization program.”
In response, Sanofi said there were no directions to discuss Beyfortus in the briefing document prepared for Hudson for the Observer interview. After the article was published, the company asked the journalist to remove statements comparing Beyfortus and Abrysvo and the claim that the U.K. chose Pfizer’s vaccine for financial reasons. The journalist added a line about the lack of comparative trials but kept the comments.
A PMCPA panel found Hudson made “very bold and unequivocal claims” about the relative merits of Beyfortus and Abrysvo and the U.K.’s choice of the Pfizer vaccine.
By suggesting the U.K. prioritized price over efficacy, Hudson may have undermined the vaccine program, the panel said. The PMCPA viewed that outcome as a potential public health concern in the context of declining vaccine uptake, a trend that is hurting Sanofi sales in the U.S.
While accepting that the interview didn’t go according to plan, Sanofi said its compliance preparations and prompt corrective actions showed its commitment to ensuring accurate information reaches the public domain. On those grounds, Sanofi argued that it hadn’t discredited the industry.
The PMCPA disagreed, concluding that Sanofi had indeed breached the most serious clause in its rule book by bringing discredit upon the industry, along with violations of six other clauses of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry's code of practice.