Washington, United States

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday (Oct 2) for their work that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

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Karikó is a professor at Sagan’s University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the US. Weissman is a Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research and Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations. 

The prize is one of the most prestigious in the scientific world and is selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university. The award also comes with 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million). The announcement was made by Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Assembly in the Swedish capital city Stockholm. 

“The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” said the award-giving body. 

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About the scientists

Kariko was senior vice president and head of RNA protein replacement at BioNTech until last year but since then, has been acting as an adviser to the company.

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Meanwhile, Weissman is a professor in vaccine research at the Perelman School. 

They  found a way, through nucleoside base modifications, to stop the immune system from launching an inflammatory attack against lab-made mRNA, which was seen as a major obstacle against any therapeutic use of the technology.

Karikó and Weissman, back in 2005, showed how adjustments to nucleosides – the molecular letters that write the mRNA’s genetic code – can keep the mRNA under the immune system’s radar.

“This year’s Nobel Prize recognizes their basic science discovery that fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with the immune system and had a major impact on society during the recent pandemic,” said Rickard Sandberg, member of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute.

“Together they have saved millions of lives, prevented severe COVID-19, reduced the overall disease burden and enabled societies to open up again,” he added. 

The secretary of the Nobel Assembly said that both scientists were “overwhelmed” by the news when contacted shortly before the announcement. 

As of June 2023, about 1.5 billion people across the world had received mRNA shots, developed by German biotech firm BioNTech and drugmaker Pfizer, as per Reuters. 

According to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), COVID-19 vaccines helped save almost 20 million lives globally in the first year of the pandemic alone. 

Last year’s medicine prize went to Swedish scientist Svante Paabo for his groundbreaking research in human evolution by sequencing the genome of Neanderthal DNA and discovering the previously unknown hominin Denisova. 

Upcoming Nobel prizes

The Nobel prize in medicine kicks off this year’s awards with the physics prize to be announced on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday.

The Swedish king will present the prizes at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, on the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. 

(With inputs from agencies)

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