Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded to Scientists for Groundbreaking Discoveries that Enabled Development of mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19

Two scientists have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their groundbreaking discoveries that enabled the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

Katalin Karikó, a professor at Sagan’s University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Drew Weissman, who performed his prizewinning research together with Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania, were announced as the winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday.

The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, made the announcement and praised the laureates for their “fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system” and for contributing to the “unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.”

Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Assembly, said both scientists were “overwhelmed” by news of the prize when he contacted them shortly before the announcement.

The discoveries of Karikó and Weissman have been instrumental in the development of mRNA vaccines, which are a new type of vaccine that uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to deliver instructions to cells to produce antigens that can trigger an immune response. This technology has been used to develop vaccines for a range of diseases, including COVID-19.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded annually to recognize outstanding achievements in the field of medicine. Karikó and Weissman join a long list of distinguished laureates who have made significant contributions to the advancement of medical science.