Hungarian, US scientists win Nobel Prize for Covid-19 vaccine work
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Scientists Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize for their discoveries that enabled the development of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.
PHOTO: AFP
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STOCKHOLM – Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and her US colleague Drew Weissman, who met in a line for a photocopier before making mRNA molecule discoveries together that paved the way for Covid-19 vaccines, won the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday.
“The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” said the Swedish award-giving body of the pair’s accolade.
The prize, among the most prestigious in the scientific world, 11 million Swedish krona
Dr Kariko, 68, was senior vice-president and head of RNA protein replacement at BioNTech until 2022 and has since acted as an adviser to the company. She is also a professor at the University of Szeged in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
In an interview released by the university after the award, she said her mother had speculated each year that she might win the Nobel Prize – to which Dr Kariko would remind her there was a time when she could not even get a grant for her research.
“She (my mother) said, ‘but you work so hard’. And I told her that many, many scientists work very, very hard,” Dr Kariko added.
The prize’s co-winner, Dr Weissman, is a professor in vaccine research at the University of Pennsylvania.
“It’s an incredible honour. I think the important thing is that we couldn’t have come to the result without both of us being involved,” he said.
The two laureates in 2005 jointly developed so-called nucleoside base modifications, which stop the immune system from launching an inflammatory attack against lab-made mRNA, previously seen as a major hurdle against any therapeutic use of the technology.
BioNTech said in June that about 1.5 billion people across the world had received its mRNA shot, co-developed with Pfizer. It was the most widely used shot in the West.
Covid-19 heroes
Professor Rickard Sandberg, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute, said: “Together, they have saved millions of lives, prevented severe Covid-19, reduced the overall disease burden and enabled societies to open up again.”
After earning a biochemistry doctorate at Szeged, Dr Kariko moved to the United States in 1985 with her husband and daughter Susan Francia, who became a US national rowing team member and Olympic gold winner.
Throughout the 1990s at the University of Pennsylvania, she tried to turn mRNA into a treatment tool but struggled to win grants because work on DNA and gene therapy captured most of the scientific community’s attention at the time.
Dr Kariko said she endured ridicule from fellow faculty members for her dogged pursuit, which led to her demotion. Taunting continued, she said, when she joined BioNTech in 2013 because the firm did not even have a website at the time.
Dr Weissman received his doctorate from Boston University in 1987 and joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1997.
Dr Kariko and Dr Weissman have said that they met in 1998 while waiting for rationed photocopying machine time. The ensuing chat piqued immunologist Dr Weissman’s interest in Dr Kariko’s RNA work.
Dr John Tregoning, a professor in vaccine immunology at London’s Imperial College, said: “Kati Kariko is one of the most inspirational scientists I have met. The ideas that she and Drew Weissman developed were critical for the success of RNA vaccines.”
Pandemic breakthrough
Messenger RNA, or mRNA, discovered in 1961, is a natural molecule that serves as a recipe for the body’s production of proteins. Using man-made mRNA to instruct human cells to make therapeutic proteins – long regarded as impossible – was commercially pioneered during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The technology breaks from established biotech medicines, generated in complex reactors by genetically modified living cells, then isolated and purified.
mRNA, by contrast, works like a piece of software that can be injected into the body to instruct human cells to churn out the desired proteins. Prospective uses include drugs against cancer and vaccines against malaria, influenza and rabies.
The medicine prize kicks off 2023’s awards, with the remaining five prizes to be unveiled in the coming days.
The prizes, first handed out in 1901, were created by Swedish dynamite inventor and wealthy businessman Alfred Nobel, and are awarded for achievements in science, literature and peace, and in later years, also for economics.
The Swedish King will present the prizes at a ceremony in Stockholm on Dec 10, the anniversary of Mr Nobel’s death, followed by a lavish banquet at city hall.
In 2022, the medicine prize went to Swede Svante Paabo for sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans, and for discovering a previously unknown human relative, the Denisovans.
Other past winners
