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Article: Pioneers of mRNA COVID vaccines win medicine Nobel
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman laid the groundwork for immunizations that were rolled out during the pandemic at record-breaking speed.
This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to biochemist Katalin Karikó and immunologist Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
The vaccines have been administered more than 13 billion times, saved millions of lives and prevented millions of cases of severe COVID-19, said the Nobel committee.
Karikó, who is at Szeged University in Hungary, and Weissman, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (UPenn), paved the way for the vaccines' development by finding a way to deliver genetic material called messenger RNA into cells without triggering an unwanted immune response.
They will each receive an equal share of the prize, which totals 11 million Swedish krona (US$1 million).
Karikó is the 13th female scientist to win a Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology (see 'Nobel imbalance'). She was born in Hungary, and moved to the United States in the 1980s. "Hopefully, this prize will inspire women and immigrants and all of the young ones to persevere and be resilient. That's what I hope," she tells Nature.
Because I wish for there to be more activity in this part of the forum I thought hey wouldn't it be a good idea to start posting a few threads pertaining to science and the Nobel Price is as good a reason as any other.
And well to be honest scientists who helped in the development of mRNA-vaccines are worthy of some recognition, especially when you consider that we have only started to use this technology and that several other vaccines against other viruses like influenza, zeka and HIV are in development.
We will have to see if all of them pan out but at least it is another tool.
