A happy surprise, and maybe good news for the vaccines. Monoclonal antibody drugs are expected to be the biggest pharmaceutical casualties of Omicron’s emergence because they target one particular spot on the virus’s spike protein. (Hence the term “monoclonal.”) With a variant like Omicron whose spike protein has undergone a freaky number of mutations, the odds that that particular spot will look different than it did on the original Wuhan strain of the virus are high. The antibodies in the treatment will no longer be able to find their target on the spike, rendering the treatments ineffective. In fact, there’s already evidence that the monoclonal antibodies produced by Regeneron and Eli Lilly don’t work as well against the new variant.