The researchers of the mRNA Covid vaccinations receive the Nobel Prize.
The two researchers who created the technology that resulted in the mRNA Covid vaccinations received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Drew Weissman and Katalin Kariko, both professors, will split the award.
Prior to the epidemic, the technology was at its experimental stage; nonetheless, millions of people now have access to it worldwide.
Currently, the same mRNA technology is being studied for a variety of illnesses, including cancer.
The Nobel Prize Committee stated that “the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.”
They were both “overwhelmed” when they received the good news via phone this morning.
Immune systems are trained to recognize and combat dangers like viruses and bacteria via vaccinations.
The foundation of conventional vaccine technology has been the use of pieces of the infectious agent or dead or weakened forms of the original virus or bacteria.
mRNA vaccines, however, adopted a completely different strategy.
Both the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines used mRNA technology during the Covid pandemic.
When they were both working at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States in the early 1990s and their interest in mRNA was seen as a scientific niche, Professors Kariko and Weissman met.
The genetic blueprints for creating one coronavirus component—a protein—are found in an mRNA Covid vaccination.
Injection of this causes our cells to produce large amounts of the viral protein.
The immune system recognizes these as alien, attacks, and learns how to combat the virus. As a result, it will be better prepared to fight off infections in the future.
If you have the appropriate genetic instructions to employ, you can quickly create a vaccination against practically everything, according to the technology’s central tenet.
Because of this, it is far quicker and more adaptable than conventional techniques to vaccine development.
Even experimental methods involving technology exist that instruct patients’ bodies to combat cancer on their own.
As they examine a patient’s tumor, researchers search for abnormal proteins the cancer is producing that aren’t seen in healthy tissue. They then create a vaccine that specifically targets those proteins and administer it to the patient.
The critical discoveries made by Profs. Kariko and Weissman led to the development of the mRNA vaccine.
The idea draws on common human biology. The function of RNA in our bodies is to translate the genetic instructions stored in our genetic code, or DNA, into the proteins that make up our body.
There were obstacles, though. However, by improving the technology, the scientists were able to manufacture significant quantities of the desired protein without triggering the kind of hazardous inflammation that had been shown in animal experiments.
This opened the door for the creation of vaccination technologies for human usage.
Drew Weissman is still employed as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, while Katalin Kariko is currently a professor at Szeged University in Hungary.