Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman in Los Angeles, April 15, 2023. STHANLEE MIRADOR/SIPA USA/SIPA
The Nobel Prize in Medicine has repeatedly faced criticism for only rewarding old scientists, preferably men, who are almost always far removed from their discoveries. And as independent as possible from current events. This time the jury took the opposite approach. On Monday, October 2, he decided to reward the Hungarian Katalin Kariko, vice president of BioNTech, and the American Drew Weissman, professor of vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania, for their crucial contribution to the development of the messenger RNA vaccine. In other words, a woman and a man, both in their 60s – almost toddlers in the rankings – and this less than three years after the first use of this revolutionary technology.
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It has to be said that the messenger RNA vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have now shaken up the world of research and health. The world, in short, in truth. In the international race to immunize against Covid-19, these newcomers have overtaken all previous technologies – with inactivated or weakened viruses, with recombinant proteins, with a viral vector. In ten months, the two laboratories developed safe and protective vaccines. With an effectiveness of 95% compared to the initial load, they even show better results than all competitors. In Western countries, particularly North America and Europe, they account for the vast majority of doses administered. Without taking the slightest risk, we can therefore claim that the more than 13 billion injections of messenger RNA vaccines that have already been carried out have made it possible to prevent a much deadlier catastrophe.
The two scientists have already reaped a nice harvest of prizes. Of particular note are the Breakthrough Prize – the most valuable –, the very chic Princess of Asturias Prize and the prestigious Lasker Prize. The French Academy of Sciences also awarded Katalin Kariko its most important medal. All that was missing was the laurels of the Swedish Academy, which everyone had promised them for two years. It is now finished.
Revolutionary puzzle
However, we must be wary of false evidence. “People need to know that this is not a unique experiment that we did and that the vaccine was not made in 10 months,” Drew Weissman told the New York Times. We modified the messenger RNA and received the award, but the vaccines are based on more than twenty years of work by Kati and me and the work of hundreds if not thousands of other scientists. » The list thus overshadows its predecessors, such as the Americans Robert Malone and Philip Felgner, who were the first to show in 1990 that a mixture of messenger RNA and fats can penetrate cells and produce proteins. Or the French Frédéric Martinon and Pierre Meulien, who discovered in 1993 that messenger RNAs encapsulated in lipid spheres could trigger an immune response.
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