Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman share $995,000 prize announced by Nobel Assembly in Stockholm
In a momentous recognition of their groundbreaking contributions
to RNA biology, two esteemed scientists, Prof Katalin Karikó and Prof Drew
Weissman, have been honored with the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine. Their exceptional work played a pivotal role in the rapid development
of mRNA-based vaccines during the Covid-19 pandemic. The prestigious award,
worth 11 million Swedish kronor (£823,000), was officially announced by the
Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
The Nobel committee commended their remarkable discoveries,
focusing on "nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of
effective mRNA vaccines against Covid-19." These mRNA vaccines operate by
delivering genetic instructions for producing viral proteins into our cells,
enabling the production of significant amounts of these proteins. This process
primes our immune cells to combat the virus effectively.
One of the major challenges in creating such vaccines was that
early versions of synthetic mRNAs triggered inflammatory responses, rendering
them unsuitable for medical use. It was through their collaborative efforts
that Karikó and Weissman uncovered a solution. They found that by making subtle
chemical adjustments to the mRNA molecules, they could not only eliminate
unwanted inflammatory reactions but also substantially increase the production
of the targeted protein. This breakthrough became the foundation for the Pfizer
and Moderna vaccines.
Prof John Tregoning, a vaccine immunologist at Imperial College
London, remarked, "They demonstrated that changing the type of the RNA
nucleotides within the vaccine altered the way in which cells see it. 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. This was a vital building block of the success of the RNA
vaccines in reducing disease and death during the pandemic."
Prof Robin Shattock, also from Imperial College London, emphasized
that these discoveries would be instrumental in the effective utilization of
future RNA vaccines and new RNA-based medicines.
The announcement of the Nobel Prize left Karikó, a research
professor at the University of Szeged in Hungary and an external consultant to
BioNTech in Germany, deeply moved. Her journey to this recognition was marked
by decades of skepticism and challenges. In the mid-90s, she was demoted by the
University of Pennsylvania due to her struggles to secure research funding.
Nevertheless, she persisted, and today, she remains an adjunct professor at the
university's Perelman School of Medicine.
Karikó's life story is one of resilience and determination. She
grew up in a small town in central Hungary, where her family lived in a single
room without running water, refrigeration, or a television. After obtaining a
postdoc position at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged, she took a
bold step. Selling her car and sewing the money into her daughter's teddy bear,
she relocated her family to Philadelphia, USA.
It was in the late 1990s, over a departmental photocopier at the
University of Pennsylvania, where Karikó was printing research papers, that she
crossed paths with Drew Weissman, now a professor of vaccine research at the
Perelman School of Medicine. Their collaboration began, and they embarked on
investigating mRNA as a potential therapeutic, initially funded by Weissman's
resources.
Karikó, reflecting on her journey, previously shared her
unwavering belief in the success of their approach, saying, "I always
wished that I would live long enough to see something that I've worked on be
approved."
The modified mRNA technology developed by Karikó and Weissman
was licensed by BioNTech and Moderna for their respective Covid-19 vaccines.
Additionally, Weissman has continued his pioneering work, developing RNA
vaccine candidates for diseases such as flu, herpes, and HIV.
At the Nobel Prize announcement in Stockholm, Prof Gunilla
Carlsson, the chair of the Nobel committee, stressed the critical importance of
their discovery in rapidly adapting the mRNA vaccine platform for clinical use,
particularly during the early phases of the pandemic. "I think in terms of
saving lives, especially in the early phase of the pandemic, it was very important,"
she emphasized.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Karikó and Weissman's
exceptional contributions have been acknowledged with the $2.66 million
Breakthrough Prize and numerous other prestigious international awards.
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