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Omicron harbors more than 30 mutations in its spike protein, the primary target of most of the world’s COVID-19 shots. And it’s certainly dodging some of the antibodies that vaccines goad our bodies into producing—more so, it appears, than the variants that have come before it.

It will also be important to see further studies confirming the latest results, because variables such as the type of cell used can affect their conclusions, says Pei-Yong Shi, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “In the next week or 10 days, there will be a lot of confirmatory results coming out,” he said.

In South Africa researchers at the Africa Health Research Institute took blood from about a dozen people who had been vaccinated with two shots of the Pfizer vaccine and looked to see how well their antibodies kill the virus. In the experiment, everyone's antibodies were able to neutralize an earlier version of the virus quite well. And that's a lot. "It's astonishing ... in terms of the reduction," said Pei-Yong Shi, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston who has been doing similar experiments to determine the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against the coronavirus. This story was picked up by NPR affiliates across the country.

Microbiologist Pei-Yong Shi runs a high-containment laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Over Thanksgiving, his team began engineering a replica of the new variant to test against the antibodies generated by vaccines. But it doesn’t happen overnight: It will take about two weeks to build the omicron replica, another few days to confirm that it’s an accurate facsimile, and one more week to pit the virus against blood samples from vaccinated people. “I think there is a lot of overreaction, and we just have to sit tight,” Shi said. “There are no results yet, these are just the mutations. What does that mean? We have to see.”

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch began engineering their own copy of the new COVID variant in local labs with genome data shared online. At the same time, researchers were working to get their hands on an isolate of the virus from a person confirmed to have been infected with it. The expert advice is to stay calm about omicron. “I think we have some concern, but it’s too early to worry a lot about this,” said Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections & Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “The bad news is that this is a variant with a lot of mutations.”

UTMB’s Noelle Anastasio joined the Town Square with Ernie Manouse show on the Houston NPR station to talk about opioids and overdose deaths.

The first omicron variant case was confirmed Monday in Harris County, Judge Lina Hidalgo said. UTMB is one of the local hospitals performing genome sequencing in positive cases to identify the type of variant.

It’s important everyone get vaccinated and boosted, Drs. Meagan Berman and Richard Rupp wrote in their Vaccine Smarts column. Some may wish to be boosted with a different vaccine, but in the end, it’s just important to get whichever is available.

Without needles and without incisions, UTMB Galveston will be the first to treat prostate cancer with this new procedure.

Even when disease or injury prevents a person from speaking, typing or walking, the brain remembers how to do these things. These memories of doing things are called neural processes. The trick is to tap into the neural processes to regain those functions, Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel wrote in their Medical Discovery News column.

Prior studies have shown that residents who receive care from full-time clinical staff have fewer avoidable hospitalizations and lower Medicare spending. Full-time providers also are better positioned to evaluate and intervene after a change in clinical status. “This has led some nursing homes to hire full-time nurse practitioners and to pay more for medical directors that are more present in the facility,” said researcher Dr. James S. Goodwin of the Sealy Center on Aging, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “In addition, nursing home residents and their families also prefer providers who are available.”

The National Academy of Inventors has announced its annual set of NAI Fellows—and six Houstonians made the list of the 164 honorees from 116 research institutions worldwide. One is Pei-Yong Shi, University of Texas Medical Branch professor and John Sealy Distinguished Chair in Innovations in Molecular Biology, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. He's also the vice chair for Innovation and Commercialization.

There's hope that a third shot of an mRNA vaccine—a so-called booster—will work better than two shots, says virologist Pei-Yong Shi at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who works with Pfizer. First off, he says, the third dose doesn't just return your antibody levels to what they were after the second shot. The level is even higher. On top of that, the booster can actually help broaden out your defenses so that you can fight off not just one variant of SARS-CoV-2 but many different versions of it. "The booster increases the level of antibodies that can push back against the variants," Shi says. "So that's another advantage to the booster."

Over the past two weeks, omicron has spread to at least seven of South Africa's nine provinces, quickly overtaking the country's outbreak—and thus, it appears, outcompeting delta, says virologist Pei-Yong Shi of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “Based on the epidemiology data, it seems like the new variant has advantages in transmitting over the previous variants,” Shi said.

Dr. Pei-Yong Shi was referenced in the magazine’s coverage about the omicron variant.

Dr. Pei-Yong Shi discussed the new variant on Houston Matters, a radio program on Houston Public Media.