Novavax Brand Guidelines: Gaithersburg 1987, Matrix-M & a Sanofi Partnership

A Maryland company with a Swedish heart.

Novavax was founded in 1987, English Wikipedia says, and today has its main offices in Gaithersburg, Maryland The company describes its work as two linked technologies: recombinant, protein-based nanoparticles, which carry the target antigen, and an adjuvant called Matrix-M, which is added to a vaccine to strengthen the immune response.

The adjuvant came from Sweden. In June 2013 Novavax bought the Swedish company Isconova AB, renamed it Novavax AB and took over its Matrix-M platform, English Wikipedia says. Novavax’s own Swedish page describes Isconova as a spin-off from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and says its team in Uppsala carries out research and development, manufacturing, quality control and supply of adjuvants for human and veterinary use.

The years before the pandemic were uneven. Its respiratory syncytial virus candidate, later called ResVax, went into a first Phase III trial of about 12,000 adults that, English Wikipedia says, did not reach its goals in 2016; the company restructured in 2017, and a later late-stage study also failed in 2019. Alongside the adult studies, the RSV candidate was also tested in 2016 for infants through the immunisation of mothers, a programme for which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave Novavax a research grant in 2015. A quadrivalent influenza candidate, NanoFlu, was given fast-track designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January 2020.

That same month Novavax announced a COVID-19 candidate, NVX-CoV2373, a protein subunit vaccine built around the virus’s spike protein. Its development was funded in part by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and by the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed programme, English Wikipedia says.

Nuvaxovid, Covovax and a malaria vaccine.

The COVID-19 vaccine reached the market under the name Nuvaxovid. The European Medicines Agency recommended it for conditional marketing authorisation in December 2021, and the European Commission granted it, English Wikipedia says; full marketing authorisation in the European Union followed in July 2023. In the United States the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorisation in July 2022, and in May 2025 approved the vaccine for adults aged 65 and over and for some younger people with underlying conditions, according to the same source.

Much of the vaccine’s reach came through partners. The Serum Institute of India made and sold it under the name Covovax, which the World Health Organization added to its emergency use list in December 2021; in Japan, Takeda manufactured and distributed it under an agreement announced in September 2021, English Wikipedia says. In January 2022 Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration gave it provisional approval, the first protein-based COVID-19 vaccine approved there, and Health Canada authorised it for adults the following month, according to the same source. Novavax’s results for the third quarter of 2026 still list Takeda, the Serum Institute and Sanofi among its partners.

Matrix-M also appears in a vaccine Novavax did not design. The company says the adjuvant is a key component of R21/Matrix-M, a malaria vaccine created by the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford and manufactured and distributed by the Serum Institute of India; English Wikipedia says the World Health Organization gave it prequalification status in December 2023.

The adjuvant itself has a botanical source. Novavax says Matrix-M contains Quillaja saponins, compounds harvested and purified from the bark of the soapbark tree, and describes it as a non-aluminium, saponin-based adjuvant. The company says it is also exploring the technology in oncology research through partnerships.

Vaccine makers and how they present themselves.

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 maker to partner.

The company changed shape after the pandemic. On 10 May 2024 Novavax and Sanofi signed a co-exclusive licensing agreement to sell Novavax’s adjuvanted COVID-19 vaccine worldwide and to develop combined influenza and COVID-19 vaccines, Manufacturing Chemist reported that day. Under the agreement Sanofi can use the Matrix-M adjuvant in its own vaccines, took a minority stake in Novavax, and from 2025 books sales of the vaccine. English Wikipedia says Novavax sold its manufacturing site in the Czech Republic to Novo Nordisk in December 2024.

In October 2026 Novavax said Sanofi had begun a Phase III trial in Europe of a combination of Nuvaxovid with Sanofi’s high-dose influenza vaccine, in adults aged 60 and over. The company said the transfer of Nuvaxovid manufacturing technology to Sanofi was expected to be completed in mid-2027; at the time of writing that transfer is still pending. In August 2026, Novavax says, its partners received approvals in the United States, the European Union and Japan for an updated formulation for the 2026–2027 season, and the company describes its strategy as partnering its technology while keeping research focused on new candidates, including one for Clostridioides difficile.

For a design guide, Novavax shows how a company can be known as much for a component — an adjuvant from Uppsala — as for its own branded product. Compare Sanofi, which now sells Nuvaxovid, and the Serum Institute of India, which made Covovax and the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine. For this guide we use navy, a laboratory blue and a soft teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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