Nobel Prize in Medicine: 2 scientists whose work enabled mRNA vaccines on COVID-19
STOCKHOLM: Katalin Kariko of Hungary and Drew Weissman of the United States won the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday for work on the messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that paved the way for COVID-19 vaccines.
The pair, who had been tipped as favourites, was honoured “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside-based modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19,” the jury said.
“The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” it added.
The panel said the pair’s groundbreaking findings have “...fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system.”
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (USD 1 million) from a bequest left by the prize's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.
Traditionally, making vaccines required growing viruses or pieces of viruses often in giant vats of cells or, like most flu shots, in chicken eggs and then purifying them before the next steps in brewing shots.
The messenger RNA approach is radically different. It starts with a snippet of genetic code that carries instructions for making proteins. Pick the right virus protein to target, and the body turns into a mini vaccine factory. But simply injecting lab-grown mRNA into the body triggered an inflammatory reaction that usually destroyed it.
Karik, a professor at Szeged University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Weissman, of the University of Pennsylvania, figured out a tiny modification to the building blocks of RNA that made it stealthy enough to slip past those immune defences.
Karik, 68, is the 13th woman to win the Nobel Prize in medicine. She was a senior vice president at BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to make one of the COVID-19 vaccines.
She and Weissman, 64, who is a professor and director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations, met by chance in the 1990s while photocopying research papers, according to Penn Today, the university's news website.
Karik said her husband was the first to pick up the early morning call, handing it to her to hear the news. “I couldn't believe it,” she said, adding that “I was very much surprised. But I am very happy.”.
Before COVID-19, mRNA vaccines were being tested for other diseases like Zika, influenza and rabies but the pandemic brought more attention to this approach, Karik said.
Nobel Committee member Gunilla Karlsson Hedestam said the prize could go some way in addressing concerns among sceptics about the speed with which COVID-19 vaccines were developed. She said the award highlights the decades of basic research that's behind this kind of work.”
Nobel announcements will continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on October 9.
