Research by Katalin Kariko and American Drew Weissman paved the way for mRNA vaccines that helped fight COVID\u002D19
STOCKHOLM — Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 and that could be used to develop other shots in the future.
But simply injecting lab-grown mRNA into the body triggered a reaction that usually destroyed it. Kariko, a professor at Szeged University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Weissman, of the University of Pennsylvania, figured out a tiny modification to the building blocks of RNA that made it stealthy enough to slip past those immune defences.
Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious diseases expert at Exeter University, said that a major advantage of mRNA technology was that vaccines could be made in extremely large quantities, since their main components are made in laboratories. Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines program at the Washington advocacy group Public Citizen, welcomed the recognition of mRNA vaccines, but said the award should also be deeply embarrassing for Western countries.
Before COVID-19, mRNA vaccines were already being tested for other diseases like Zika, influenza and rabies, but the pandemic brought more attention to this approach, Kariko said. “There was already clinical trials before COVID, but people were not aware.”
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