COVID Vaccine Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize

October 2, 2023 Coronavirus, Medicine

The New York Times reports:

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who together identified a chemical tweak to messenger RNA that laid the foundation for vaccines against Covid-19 that have since been administered billions of times globally, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday.

Together, Dr. Karikó and Dr. Weissman, who met over a copy machine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1998, transformed vaccine technology. Seven years later, they published a surprising finding about messenger RNA, also known as mRNA, which provides instructions to cells to make proteins.

When mRNA was introduced to cells, the molecules were so delicate that the cells instantly destroyed it. But the scientists found that they could avert that outcome by slightly modifying the mRNA. When they added the altered mRNA to cells, it could briefly prompt cells to make any protein they chose.

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