“Se­in­feld” ac­tor Ja­son Alexan­der takes a turn as a guardian an­gel in a new Sanofi cam­paign to en­cour­age flu vac­ci­na­tions.

Known for his fun­ny, off­beat George Costan­za char­ac­ter, Alexan­der takes on a sweet­er though still hu­mor­ous role pro­tect­ing his charge from “life’s lit­tle dis­as­ters.” As he catch­es falling pi­geon poop in his hat, swaps ex­pired milk and fends off in­sects, he com­pares his guardian an­gel role to flu im­mu­niza­tion.

“Pro­tec­tion like this doesn’t have to be su­per­nat­ur­al. Be­cause just like me, a flu shot can help pre­vent nasty com­pli­ca­tions from the flu — like pneu­mo­nia, heart at­tack and stroke,” he says in the on­line video.

The Sanofi aware­ness cam­paign called “Not To­day, Flu” in part­ner­ship with the Amer­i­can Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion is aimed at in­creas­ing flu vac­ci­na­tions in what is ex­pect­ed to be a dif­fi­cult and po­ten­tial­ly longer flu sea­son.

The 2021 fall in­fluen­za sea­son was mut­ed by self-im­posed so­cial dis­tanc­ing be­cause of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, a late resur­gence through June, along with a big uptick in 2022 flu cas­es in the south­ern half of the world, has of­fi­cials con­cerned about the just-be­gin­ning sea­son north of the Equa­tor.

Ken Pauli­no

“We need to en­sure that there’s a good pub­lic health re­sponse out there to get pa­tients and in­di­vid­u­als im­mu­nized — and put the fo­cus back on get­ting flu shots on an an­nu­al ba­sis in do­ing our part to pre­vent a po­ten­tial­ly bad in­fluen­za sea­son com­ing up,” said Ken Pauli­no, Sanofi’s head of the adult vac­cines busi­ness in the US.

The CDC is rec­om­mend­ing flu vac­ci­na­tions this year for every­one six months and old­er dur­ing Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber, sim­i­lar to its pre­vi­ous guid­ance. How­ev­er, it added a spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tion this year for peo­ple ages 65 and old­er to re­ceive one of the three Flu­zone, Flublok or Flu­ad high­er-dose or ad­ju­vant­ed vac­cines. Sanofi makes both Flu­zone and Flublok.

The “Not To­day, Flu” dig­i­tal cam­paign in­cludes a ded­i­cat­ed web­site with re­sources such as a lo­cal flu vac­cine lo­ca­tor, along with me­dia in­ter­views by Alexan­der and so­cial me­dia posts on Face­book, Twit­ter, In­sta­gram and Tik­Tok with the cam­paign Tik­Tok han­dle@not­to­dayflu.

Span­ish-lan­guage ver­sions of the cam­paign are al­so run­ning along with a bilin­gual me­dia tour and part­ner­ships with Span­ish-speak­ing in­flu­encers to ad­dress “on­go­ing flu dis­par­i­ties in racial and eth­nic mi­nor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties,” Sanofi said.

Boehringer Ingelheim uncorked some positive results suggesting that Spevigo can help prevent flare-ups in patients with a severe form of psoriasis, months after the drug was approved to treat existing flares.

Spevigo, an IL-36R antibody also known as spesolimab, met its primary and a key secondary endpoint in the Phase IIb EFFISAYIL 2 trial in patients with generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP), Boehringer announced on Monday. While the company is keeping the hard numbers under wraps until later this year, it said in a news release that it anticipates sharing the results with regulators.

AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi won an appeals court win on Monday, as the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found that the companies cannot be forced to provide 340B-discounted drugs purchased by hospitals from an unlimited number of community and specialty pharmacies.

“Legal duties do not spring from silence,” the decision says as the court makes clear that the federal government’s interpretation of the “supposed requirement” that the 340B program compels drugmakers to supply their discounted drugs to an unlimited number of contract pharmacies is not correct, noting:

A US appeals court has ruled against Johnson & Johnson’s use of bankruptcy to deal with mounting talc lawsuits, deciding that doing so would “create a legal blind spot.”

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a previous bankruptcy court decision on Monday, calling for the dismissal of a Chapter 11 filing by J&J’s subsidiary LTL Management.

Faced with more than 38,000 lawsuits alleging its talc-based products caused cancer, J&J spun its talc liabilities into a separate company called LTL Management back in October 2021 and filed for bankruptcy, a controversial move colloquially referred to as a “Texas two-step” bankruptcy. Claimants argued that the strategy is a misuse of the US bankruptcy code — and on Monday, a panel of judges agreed.

New York City is investing $20 million in biotech this year in the form of a 50,000-square-foot “innovation space” at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, complete with offices, research laboratories and events and programming space to grow biotech startups and companies.

Mayor Eric Adams said during his State of The City Address last Thursday that there will be an “emphasis” on making more opportunities for women and people of color to further diversify the industry. The City first reported the news.