Laboratory flasks used to explain quantum dots during the announcement of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on October 4, 2023. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND / AFP
Nobel Week begins each year with three scientific prizes that reward key innovations in medicine, physics and chemistry. This cutting-edge research, often difficult to understand, is crucial to the advancement of certain current or future technologies or applications.
Nobel Prize in Medicine: Making messenger RNA vaccines possible
The Hungarian Katalin Kariko and the American Drew Weissman received the prize on Monday October 2nd for their work on messenger RNA as the origin of the first vaccines that use this technology developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna and are very effective against Covid- 19 are.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers The Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for their contribution to the messenger RNA vaccine
Basic concept
L’Messenger ribonucleic acid (messenger RNA) is used by each of our cells to transmit information. The genetic information, our DNA, remains in the cell nucleus. To produce proteins encoded by our genes, our body “copies” a portion of DNA into the form of an RNA strand that contains the same genetic information. Chemically, an RNA strand is made up of a series of four types of molecules: adenine, uracil, cytosine, or guanine. It can leave the cell nucleus and be translated into protein. The discovery of the concept of messenger RNA was rewarded with a Nobel Prize in 1965.
THE Vaccinations Work by preparing the body to recognize and eliminate a pathogenic microorganism: This can be done by a weakened or inactivated virus, viral vectors (another harmless virus modified to resemble the target virus), proteins required for the which are characteristic of the virus to be processed, or genetic material (DNA or RNA) that allows our body to produce these proteins. In all cases, the aim is to bring the patient’s body into contact with characteristic elements of the virus so that it produces the necessary antibodies in the event of a future infection.
Reread the 2020 decoding: How do potential Covid-19 vaccines work?
Innovation is rewarded
In order to develop vaccines using messenger RNA, the molecule had to survive injection of the vaccine and be translated into proteins.
Other researchers had shown that coating messenger RNA with a fatty capsule allowed the RNA to penetrate cells efficiently. But RNA produced in the laboratory was immediately destroyed by the immune system. Tests on mice showed that activation of white blood cells caused inflammation. However, we did not observe the same inflammation with mammalian RNA.
Researchers Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman tried numerous chemical modifications. They observed that one of the four molecules that make up RNA, uracil, had to be replaced by another molecule, pseudouridine. The immune system then does not recognize the RNA contained in the vaccine and the messenger substance can penetrate the cells and enable the production of the proteins characteristic of the virus.
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