Nobel Prize in Medicine 2023

October 3, 2023

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2023 has been awarded to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for their groundbreaking research on nucleoside base modifications that played a pivotal role in the development of highly effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Let’s delve into who these scientists are and how their work revolutionized vaccine technology.

Meet Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman

Kariko’s Journey:

Katalin Kariko was born in 1955 in Szolnok, Hungary.
She earned her PhD from Szeged University in 1982.
Kariko conducted postdoctoral research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged until 1985.
In 1989, she joined the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked alongside Drew Weissman.
Kariko later became vice president and senior vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals.
Since 2021, she has been a Professor at Szeged University and an Adjunct Professor at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Weissman’s Background:

Drew Weissman was born in 1959 in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA.
He obtained his MD and PhD degrees from Boston University in 1987.
Weissman completed clinical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School.
He pursued postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health.
In 1997, Weissman established his research group at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
He holds the title of Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research and serves as the Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations.

The Significance of mRNA Vaccines

Traditional Vaccines:

Conventional vaccines historically relied on weakened or inactivated viruses to stimulate antibody production in the body.
Production of these vaccines involved growing viruses in cell cultures, which was time-consuming.

The Emergence of mRNA Vaccines:

mRNA technology had been known since the 1980s but was not suitable for large-scale vaccine production.
Unlike traditional vaccines, mRNA vaccines utilize messenger Ribonucleic Acid (mRNA) to communicate with the immune system.
Genetically engineered mRNA instructs cells to produce specific proteins to combat viruses.

Kariko and Weissman’s Contribution

Recognizing the Challenge:

Kariko and Weissman identified a key problem: dendritic cells in the body perceived lab-grown genetically engineered mRNA as foreign, triggering an inflammatory response.

The Breakthrough:

To address this issue, they experimented with chemically modifying the bases in mRNA.
By introducing unique chemical alterations in the mRNA bases and delivering them to dendritic cells, they reduced the inflammatory response.
These groundbreaking results were published in 2005, with further developments in 2008 and 2010.

The Impact on COVID-19 Vaccines

Thanks to the foundational work of Kariko and Weissman, research on mRNA vaccines was already in progress when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Moderna and Pfizer, among others, harnessed this technology to rapidly develop COVID-19 vaccines.
mRNA vaccines proved to be a game-changer, allowing for quicker and more targeted vaccine development.

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