Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to scientists who laid foundation for messenger RNA vaccines::undefined
Deserved. Their work gave us hope and a way out of the pandemic.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to two scientists whose research laid the groundwork for messenger RNA vaccines that transformed the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
Early in her career, Katalin Kariko, 68, a Hungarian-born scientist, saw mRNA’s medical potential and pursued it with ferocious and single-minded tenacity that exiled her to the outskirts of science.
After a chance meeting over the photocopier at the University of Pennsylvania 25 years ago, she worked closely with Drew Weissman, 64, an immunologist who saw the potential for the technology to create a new kind of vaccine.
Together, Kariko and Weissman’s complementary knowledge helped to unravel a way to chemically tweak messenger RNA, turning basic biology into a useful medical technology ready to change the world when the pandemic struck.
Harnessing the ability to use the body’s own machinery to build proteins had vast therapeutic potential in theory, but Kariko and Weissman discovered a fundamental problem.
The Nobel Assembly cited the importance of the work for contributing to “the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.”
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