Sev­en­teen months af­ter spin­ning out of Ox­ford, Vac­citech has lined up some big part­ners to help start the world’s first big hu­man study of a uni­ver­sal flu vac­cine.

The Na­tion­al In­sti­tute for Health Re­search is kick­ing this off by re­cruit­ing 500 pa­tients over the age of 65, the most vul­ner­a­ble group dur­ing every flu sea­son.

Every year, sea­son­al flu vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers gear up to cre­ate vac­cines that tar­get the pro­teins that lie on the sur­face of flu cells, look­ing to kick up an im­mune re­sponse against it. But they’re slap­ping a puck that has to hit a mov­ing tar­get that’s still months away from de­clar­ing it­self — a tough job that of­ten miss­es its mark.

The uni­ver­sal flu vac­cine, which for years now has been a Holy Grail of re­search in the field, will try and do the work by tar­get­ing un­chang­ing el­e­ments of the flu virus, mak­ing it far more ef­fec­tive. By go­ing af­ter core pro­teins, in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve they can arouse flu-spe­cif­ic T cells, as op­posed to an­ti­bod­ies, ei­ther stop­ping the flu or dulling its im­pact.

That’s the the­o­ry, in any case. And it could prove a life­saver for the hun­dreds of thou­sands of se­niors fac­ing the flu every year.

While this is be­ing billed as the first big hu­man study, much larg­er stud­ies would be need­ed ahead of any ap­proval, which is still years away — at best.

At PACT Pharma, the lofty goal to unleash a “tsunami” of T cells personalized for each patient has hinged on the ability to correctly identify the neoantigens that form something of a fingerprint for each tumor, and extract the small group of T cells primed to attack the cancer. It still has a long way to go testing a treatment in humans, but the biotech says it has nailed that highly technical piece of the process.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Myovant $MYOV has closely matched its positive first round of Phase III data for their uterine fibroid drug relugolix, setting up a head-to-head rivalry with pharma giant AbbVie as the little biotech steers to the market with a planned filing in Q4.

Here’s how Myovant plans to prevail over the AbbVie $ABBV empire.

In the study, 71.2% of women receiving once-daily relugolix combination therapy achieved the clinical response they were looking for, compared to only 14.7% in the control arm. The data comfortably reflected the same outcomes in the first Phase III — 73.4% of women receiving once-daily oral relugolix combination therapy achieved the responder criteria compared with 18.9% of women receiving placebo — which will reassure regulators that they are getting the carefully randomized data that qualifies for the FDA’s gold standard for success.

The executive team at Sage $SAGE have skirted another potential pitfall on its way to racking up a big future for its depression drug Zulresso.

Little Marinus Pharmaceuticals $MRNS had sought to challenge the Sage drug with an IV formulation — followed by an oral version — of ganaxolone for postpartum depression. But researchers say their Phase II study failed to positively differentiate itself from a placebo at 28 days — leaving them to hold up “clinically meaningful” data within the first day of administration compared to the control arm.

Roche set out to make a better flu medicine than Tamiflu as that franchise was headed to a generic showdown. Now they’ll see just how well Xofluza stacks up against the mainstay drug after handing off over-the-counter rights in the US to Sanofi.

Sanofi $SNY says it will now step in to negotiate a deal with the FDA to steer Tamiflu into the OTC market, a role that could well involve new studies to ease passage of the drug out of doctor’s hands and into the consumer end of the market. And the French pharma giant will have first dibs over “selected” OTC markets around the world as they push ahead.

The nonprofit Bioethics International has come out with their latest scorecard on data transparency among the big biopharmas in the industry — flagging a few standouts while spotlighting some laggards who are continuing to underperform.

Now in its third year, the nonprofit created a new set of standards with Yale School of Medicine and Stanford Law School to evaluate the track record on trial registration, results reporting, publication and data-sharing practice.

Durect $DRRX got a badly needed shot in the arm Monday morning as Gilead’s busy BD team lined up access to its extended-release platform tech for HIV and hepatitis B.

Gilead, a leader in the HIV sector, is paying a modest $25 million in cash for the right to jump on the platform at Durect, which has been using its technology to come up with an extended-release version of bupivacaine. The FDA rejected that in 2014, but Durect has been working on a comeback.