Introducing Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman: the latest medical Nobel prize winners
The two scientists have been awarded the honour in recognition of their efforts when creating the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.
On Monday, Professor Katalin Karikó and Professor Drew Weissman were named as the most recent winners of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm for developing the technology that led to the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.
BREAKING NEWS
The 2023 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/Y62uJDlNMj— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2023
The technology was experimental before the pandemic hit in 2020 but has now been distributed to millions of people around the world to protect them against the deadly virus.
As well as helping to re-gain control on an illness that was single-handedly wiping out the nation, the technology is now being researched for other diseases including cancer.
As a result of winning the Nobel, the two scientists will share the 11m Swedish kronor, which equates to £823,000.
A huge problem that hindered progress with the Covid-19 vaccines in the early stages was early developments provoked inflammatory reactions, making them unsuitable for use.
However, whilst working together, Professor Karikó and Professor Weissman discovered that by making small chemical tweaks to the mRNA molecules, they could not only abolish unwanted inflammatory responses, but also increase produce of the target protein. This approach became the basis for making the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
‘They demonstrated that changing the type of the RNA nucleotides within the vaccine altered the way in which cells see it,’ said Professor John Tregoning, a vaccine immunologist at Imperial College London. ‘This increased the amount of vaccine protein made following the injection of the RNA, effectively increasing the efficiency of the vaccination: more response for less RNA.’
The two scientists met in the early 1990s when they were working at the University of Pennsylvania when their interest in mRNA was viewed as scientific backwater.
Speaking to the BBC, Professor Weissman said: ‘I would go to meetings and present what I was working on, and people would look at me and say: “Well, that’s very nice, but why don’t you do something worthwhile with your time, mRNA will never work.”’
Commenting on the news of them winning the Nobel, Professor Weissman added: ‘I was…overjoyed and then [in] disbelief, and a little but suspecting that there was some anti-vaxxer playing a prank on us.
‘But when we saw the announcement, we know it was real and there was just a fantastic feeling.’
Currently, Professor Weissman is still working at the University of Pennsylvania and Professor Karikó is now based at Szeged University in Hungary.
Image: Peggy Peterson