Dynavax Brand Guidelines: Double Helix, CpG 1018 & Heplisav-B

A 1996 start built on adjuvant science.

Dynavax began in California in 1996. Dealroom’s company profile says it was incorporated that year as Double Helix Corporation and took the name Dynavax Technologies in September 1996, and it lists Lawrence M. Lichtenstein, Dennis A. Carson and Eyal Raz as its founders. The same profile dates the company’s stock-market listing to 2004 and places its headquarters in Emeryville, California.

The idea at the centre of the company is the adjuvant: an ingredient combined with an antigen in a vaccine to help stimulate an immune response, as Dynavax’s own science pages explain it. Its adjuvant, CpG 1018, is described by the company as a toll-like receptor 9 (TLR9) agonist. English Wikipedia’s article on hepatitis B vaccines describes it as a short synthetic strand of DNA, a 22-unit phosphorothioate-linked oligodeoxynucleotide, which Dynavax combines with the same kind of recombinant hepatitis B surface antigen used in earlier vaccines.

In 2006 Dynavax added a European manufacturing base. On 29 March 2006 the trade news site Bionity reported that Crucell planned to sell Rhein Biotech GmbH of Düsseldorf, a vaccine and biopharmaceutical maker with about 45 employees, to Dynavax; Rhein Biotech GmbH belonged to Rhein Biotech N.V., which was 93 percent owned by Berna Biotech, itself recently bought by Crucell. Dynavax’s website now describes its German arm, Dynavax GmbH, as formerly known as Rhein Biotech, and says it works with a yeast-based production technology, Hansenula polymorpha, refined since the late 1980s and licensed to partners for hepatitis B vaccines and other products that it says are registered in more than 90 countries, among them a vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India.

Heplisav-B and a long road to approval.

The company’s marketed vaccine is Heplisav-B, an adult hepatitis B vaccine, and its path to market was slow. BioPharma Dive reported on 9 November 2017 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved it for adults aged 18 and over, after an application first submitted in April 2012, two complete response letters (in 2013 and 2016) and two advisory committee meetings, in 2012 and 2017. The same report noted that it is given as two doses one month apart, where the two established vaccines it named, GSK’s Engerix-B and Merck’s Recombivax HB, are given in three doses over six months, and that Dynavax planned to launch it in the first quarter of 2018 with a small sales force. Earlier in 2017, the publication added, Dynavax had said this would be its last attempt to win approval, and the FDA had pushed its decision date back three months, from August to November; chief executive Eddie Gray told BioPharma Dive that the setbacks had been mainly a challenge of process rather than content.

Europe followed. English Wikipedia records that the European Medicines Agency’s human-medicines committee gave a positive opinion in December 2020, with Dynavax GmbH as the applicant, and that the vaccine was approved for use in the European Union in February 2021. Dynavax’s website says the vaccine has also been approved in Great Britain.

The adjuvant became a business of its own during the COVID-19 pandemic. English Wikipedia records that Clover Biopharmaceuticals chose Dynavax’s CpG and alum adjuvant for its SCB-2019 vaccine trials in February 2021, after weighing manufacturing considerations, and that the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) funded Dynavax to produce the adjuvant for several COVID-19 vaccines; that Corbevax was developed by Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine together with Dynavax; and that Valneva developed its inactivated COVID-19 vaccine, VLA2001, in collaboration with Dynavax. Dynavax says it supplied CpG 1018 for nearly one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses made by developers around the world.

Design and documentation.

Vaccine makers sell to health ministries, procurement agencies, hospitals and clinicians long before any patient sees a pack, and their visual language reflects that audience. The imagery tends to stay close to the work itself: gloved hands holding a vial up to the light, rows of filled vials on a stainless line, and researchers in lab coats at a bench or a microscope. The point of these pictures is to show process and care rather than spectacle.

Production is a second recurring subject. Company photographs often show clean production suites, with staff in full gowns, hoods and masks behind glass, and long views of filling lines, bioreactors and freezers. For mRNA companies in particular, the plant itself has become part of the story, and new sites tend to be photographed and announced as milestones in their own right.

A third strand is global health. Vaccine makers frequently show clinics, community health workers and the cold chain: insulated boxes, refrigerated trucks and storage rooms that keep doses within a temperature range on the way to where they are used. Maps, partner logos and the names of public bodies often sit alongside these images, because much of the business runs through governments, international agencies and non-profit funders.

The trade has its own meeting places. Conferences such as the World Vaccine Congress and ESCMID Global, the congress of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, bring companies, researchers and buyers together. In a field where so many pictures show similar vials, gowns and laboratories, a name, a typeface and a single accent colour often do much of the work of telling one company from another.

From a Nasdaq listing to a Sanofi subsidiary.

Dynavax stayed independent for almost three decades. On 24 December 2025 it announced that Sanofi would acquire it, and on 10 February 2026 Sanofi said it had completed the acquisition after a tender offer, with Dynavax continuing as an indirect, wholly owned Sanofi subsidiary and its shares ceasing to trade on Nasdaq that day. Sanofi said the deal brought in Heplisav-B, which it described as marketed in the United States, a shingles vaccine candidate called Z-1018 in phase 1/2 studies, and further vaccine projects, adding them to its adult-immunisation business.

The company’s website is organised around a short set of sections — about, product, science, pipeline and careers — with a mission line about developing and commercialising novel vaccines, and it marks Dynavax, Heplisav-B and CpG 1018 as registered trademarks. The site says chief executive Ryan Spencer joined the company in 2005 and became CEO in December 2019, and it presents the Düsseldorf operation as Dynavax Europe.

For a design guide, Dynavax shows how a company built on an ingredient most people never see, the adjuvant, can carry one name through regulation, partnerships and a change of owner. Compare Sanofi, its owner since 2026, and Valneva, which developed a COVID-19 vaccine with Dynavax. For this guide we use a deep teal, ink navy and a pale mint with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Dynavax’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.