Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2023 on Monday. The prestigious prize recognises their groundbreaking discoveries related to nucleoside base modifications that have paved the way for the development of highly effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
According to the official statement, the discoveries by the two Nobel Laureates were critical for developing effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic.
“Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” the statement added.
Vaccination stimulates the formation of an immune response to a particular pathogen. This gives the body a head start in the fight against disease in the event of a later exposure.
Who is Katalin Karikó ?
Katalin Karikó was born in 1955 in Szolnok, Hungary. She received her PhD from Szeged’s University in 1982 and performed postdoctoral research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged until 1985. She then conducted postdoctoral research at Temple University, Philadelphia, and the University of Health Science, Bethesda. In 1989, she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she remained until 2013. After that, she became vice president and later senior vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals. Since 2021, she has been a Professor at Szeged University and an Adjunct Professor at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Who is Drew Weissman?
Drew Weissman was born in 1959 in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA. He received his MD, PhD degrees from Boston University in 1987. He did his clinical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School and postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health. In 1997, Weissman established his research group at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research and Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations.
These annual prizes, recognising accomplishments in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace, originated from the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish dynamite inventor who passed away in 1896. In 1968, Sweden’s central bank introduced the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
The laureates for these prestigious awards are revealed in Stockholm throughout October, except for the Peace Prize, for which honorees are chosen by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.
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