Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for groundbreaking discoveries in messenger RNA research that have made possible the development of effective MRnas for COVID-19 vaccines.
The Nobel Committee on Monday honored Katalin and Weissman for their discovery of mRNA nucleoside modification. These findings lay the foundation for the MRNA technology used in the COVID-19 vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech, as well as in the COVID-19 vaccine Moderna(MRNA). The Nobel Committee praised their discovery for saving millions of lives and fundamentally changing our understanding of how mrnas interact with the immune system. Katalin and Weissman began their collaboration about 15 years ago at the University of Pennsylvania.
"In the face of one of the most serious threats to human health in the modern era, the laureates have, through their groundbreaking discoveries, contributed to the unprecedented speed with which vaccines have been developed," the Nobel Committee said.
Katalin is a professor at the University of Szeged in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Weissman is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.