Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has requested that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launch an investigation into the prior Biden administration’s $28 million award to an obscure biomedical company.
“I write to bring to your attention a potentially troubling issue and possible conflict-of-interest with a multi-million-dollar award recipient from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) research program,” Ernst wrote in a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. She described that a company, “barely in existence, which never previously received direct National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, was awarded $28 million last fall by the Biden Administration as part of the new ARPA-H research program.”
The company’s top executive is a former HHS employee.
“Furthermore, the company taking in $28 million lists only a post office box in Maryland as its business address on public funding records posted on USAspending.gov,” Ernst said, going on to ask, “How does a company barely in existence, headed by a recent political appointee, use a post office box as an address and get a $28 million check from NIH’s ARPA-H program, reportedly to work on vaccines?”
USA Spending lists the award’s description as an “applied biotechnology for broad flavivirus antigen discovery and vaccine candidate evaluation.”
Detailing the company’s obscurity, Ernst wrote that the State of Maryland “shows several records pertaining to Vaccine Company, Inc, which include that it failed to file a property return in 2023 and therefore forfeited its Maryland registration.” Public records indicate that a January 2023 filing from California “lists the company’s Chief Executive Officer as John Merkels, with the post office box in Maryland listed as his address, while Juha Lauren is listed as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), with the Maryland post office box address listed for him, as well,” Ernst explained.
In July 2023, former Biden administration staffer Sonya Bernstein was listed as “President or Vice President” of the vaccine company. Bernstein was listed as the company’s “Chief Financial Officer” in a June 2024 filing from California Secretary of State.
Further questioning the Biden-era grant, Ernst asked, “Tracking details in the Vaccine Company, Inc.’s California filing, and comparing that to realtor floor plans found online, it appears the company might have use of a laboratory in San Francisco. If true, why then would the $28 million taxpayer award be sent to a Maryland post office box, instead of to the California laboratory?”
Ernst requested that RFK Jr. provide information pertaining to the location of Vaccine Company, Inc. and how it intends to use the funds for vaccine research.
