Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman: the parents of the RNA covid vaccines win the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine

Two scientists who managed to understand how to modify mRNA to turn it into an effective therapy that allows a key technology to rapidly develop vaccines in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine this Monday. 2023.

The jury of the Swedish Academy awards them the award “for their discoveries on nucleoside base modifications that allowed the development of effective mRNA vaccines against covid-19”. The scientists, discoverers of a type of vaccine that saved lives and stopped the pandemic that paralyzed the world in 2020, will have to share 9 million Swedish crowns, equivalent to 830,000 euros.

Hungarian biologist Katalin Karikó, 68, is senior vice president at BionTech and associate professor of neurosurgery at Penn University School of Medicine. Immunologist Drew Weissman, 64, is a professor of vaccine research at the same Ivy League university in Philadelphia (USA), where they have collaborated for decades.

The award, in fact, rewards an association of scientists that began thanks to a chance meeting in 1997 while they were photocopying research papers.. Since then, Karikó and Weissman have jointly investigated all the possibilities of mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) as a therapeutic treatment.

Weissman and Karikó realized at the dawn of their teamwork that mRNA caused a serious inflammatory effect in the body that limited its biomedical use and prevented its use for vaccines.. Its fragility in conservation was also an obstacle. But over two decades, experiments allowed both scientists to safely orchestrate protein production.. And they came up with a solution that allowed mRNA to carry new work orders to cells without causing flare-ups of inflammation.

Initially, their findings were not celebrated by the scientific community as they expected.. To some they seemed “unconventional and almost science fiction,” Karikó would admit.. Until 2010, when the couple published that RNA in mice allowed the temporary production of red blood cells. Then the academy began to take notice of his important discoveries.

At the dawn of the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020, their work shone universally because Pfizer/BionTech and Moderna decided to use Karikó and Weissman's technology to develop their vaccines against the virus.. They have been used in 164 countries, and in the United States alone, mRNA vaccines account for more than 655 million total doses administered since they became available in December 2020.

From the University where associates continue to work, they highlight this Thursday that “during the greatest public health crisis of our lives, vaccine developers trusted the discoveries of Dr.. Weissman and Dr.. Karikó, who saved countless lives and paved the way out of the pandemic” and remember that now, “the same approach is being tested for other diseases and conditions.”

Princess of Asturias Award

Karikó and Weissman have received numerous awards before the Nobel Prize. Together with five other Covid-19 vaccine researchers, they obtained, for example, the 2021 Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research.

In his speech upon receiving the award in Oviedo, Karikó said: “The path of scientific discoveries never follows a straight line, it has twists and turns at every juncture and requires international collaborative efforts and the contribution of many scientists,” he highlighted.

Vaccines created with mRNA technology are considered among the most effective developed to date against the coronavirus, because they manage to maintain their effectiveness with the new variants. Their value is that they teach cells to make a protein that triggers an immune response within the body.

HIV could be the next achievement of this association of researchers that was not taken seriously at first. Three new experimental vaccines to protect against HIV infection, all based on an mRNA design similar to that used in the Covid-19 vaccine, are currently in early human clinical trials.. But it could also be effective against malaria, in addition to reducing cancer and treating many other diseases.