Two scientists whose pioneering work helped create mRNA Covid vaccines were today awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in person Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman with the duo credited with helping to change the course of the pandemic.
Before mRNA jabs were rolled out to millions of people worldwide to protect them against Covid, such technology was considered experimental. Researchers are now exploring if it could help beat cancer and other diseases.
The US scientist and Hungarian peer first met in the 1990s while working at the University of Pennsylvania after a chance meeting while photocopying research papers as they realized their shared interest before embarking on their decades-long mission to help make better jabs.
Their work saw them jointly develop so-called nucleoside base modifications, which stop the immune system from launching an inflammatory attack against laboratory-made mRNA — once seen as a major hurdle against any therapeutic use of the tech.
The duos ‘groundbreaking findings’ have ‘fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system’, the Nobel Assembly said.
They contributed to the ‘unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times’, they added.
While the prize-winning science dates back to 2005, the first vaccines to use the mRNA technology were those made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna against Covid.
mRNA is the genetic blueprint that instructs cells to make proteins in the body.
