preventative vaccines

Looks like Pfizer's pneumococcal vaccine Prevenar 13 is down on its luck in the U.K.; the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation shafted the shot in favor of Pneumovax for adults and high-risk individuals.

Hepatitis C virus infection is spread through the blood, and it can lead to liver cirrhosis and is the leading cause of liver cancer. Okairos, a spinout from Merck ($MRK), is starting a Phase I/II clinical trial for its preventive hepatitis C vaccine for people at risk of infection, which it says is the first multi-center, double-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of a vaccine to prevent HCV infection.