Nobel Prize in Medicine to Kariko and Weissman for mRNA vaccine
Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that led to vaccines for COVID-19. The announcement was made on Monday, October 2 by the jury at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.
The vaccines against COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna used mRNA technology.
While technique of using mRNA to develop vaccines was first demonstrated in 1990, it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that Kariko (of Hungary) and Weissman (of USA), long-standing colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, developed a technique to control dangerous side-effects, thus opening the way to develop safe human vaccines.
By awarding Kariko and Weissman, the Nobel committee in Stockholm has broken with its usual practice of honouring decades-old research. The reason was apparent in the statement on the award by the jury, which said that the duo “contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times”.
