Thank the rare crested ibis for a clue that could someday help our bodies make better drugs.

The species of bird is the only one known to naturally produce an enzyme able to generate a noncanonical amino acid; that is, one not among the 20 necessary to encode most proteins.

The antibody drugs sotrovimab and casirivimab-imdevimab are not recommended for patients with COVID-19, says a WHO Guideline Development Group of international experts in The BMJ.

These drugs work by binding to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, neutralising the virus's ability to infect cells.

High levels of mucosal antibodies in the airways reduce the risk of being infected by omicron, but many do not receive detectable antibodies in the airways despite three doses of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. These are the findings of a study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital in Sweden.

Tumor cells are notoriously good at evading the human immune system; they put up physical walls, wear disguises and handcuff the immune system with molecular tricks. Now, UC San Francisco researchers have developed a drug that overcomes some of these barriers, marking cancer cells for destruction by the immune system.

A Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating the antiviral tecovirimat, also known as TPOXX, is now enrolling adults and children with monkeypox infection in the United States. Study investigators aim to enroll more than 500 people from clinical research sites nationwide. Interested volunteers can visit the ACTG website (clinical trial A5418) for more information.

Researchers from the University of Oxford and their partners have today reported new findings from their Phase 2b trial following the administration of a booster dose of the candidate malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-M™ - which previously demonstrated high-level efficacy of 77% over the following 12 months in young west African children in 2021.

A new paper in European Heart Journal - Digital Health, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that social-distancing measures like total lockdown have a measurable impact on vascular health. The study compared the impact on the health of people living in a partial vs. a total lockdown during the beginning of COVID-19.