The Swedish Academy today awarded Katalín Karikó and Drew Weissman the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the messenger RNA-based Covid vaccine. Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó worked behind the scenes for 40 years, developing key breakthroughs for Moderna and BioNTech injections. Drew Weissman worked with Karikó and enabled messenger RNA-based therapies. The Pfizer or Moderna vaccines contain it and would not exist without his vision. With Karikó there are 13 women who have received the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
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The Swedish Academy jury emphasized that it was awarding this award to Karikó and Wiessman “for their discoveries on nucleoside base modifications, which enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against Covid-19.” “The discoveries of the two Nobel Prize winners were instrumental in the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic that began in early 2020. Through their groundbreaking discoveries that have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the winners have contributed to the unprecedented pace of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” emphasized the Jury.
For the same reason, both winners received the 2022 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award. Hungarian Karikó, whose initial research was rejected until she lost her job at the university, and American Weissman, who suffered similar problems, were honored with the Princess of Asturias Prize last year. “I received one rejection letter after another from institutions and pharmaceutical companies when I asked them for money to develop this idea,” Karikó told EL PAÍS in an interview in December 2020, in the middle of the pandemic.
Katalin Karikó, Hungarian-American biochemist, was born in Szolnok, Hungary, in January 1955. After graduating in biology from the University of Szeged (Hungary) in 1978 and obtaining a doctorate in biochemistry in 1982, she began researching the properties of messenger RNA at this Hungarian center. In 1985 she emigrated to the USA with her husband and two-year-old daughter. Drew Weissman, born in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA, is a professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, working on RNA and its application in vaccine development and gene therapy.
RNA is a vital molecule. Synthesized in the cell nucleus, it reads the instructions written in the DNA and follows them so that the organism’s factories produce everything necessary for survival. In the 1990s, Karikó came up with the idea of using this messenger substance to heal the sick. If the right piece of RNA were introduced into his cells, he speculated, they would produce the missing protein that causes anemia or trigger an immune response to an infection or even cancer. Weissman wanted to make better vaccines and also suspected that the answer might lie in the fragile molecule.
The stability of messenger RNA is the achievement highlighted by virologist Mariano Esteban, head of the smallpox virus and vaccine group at the National Biotechnology Center (CNB), CSIC. “It was degraded by the sight. “They modified it to make it stable,” he says. They also figured out how to smuggle it into the cell and wrap it in lipid nanoparticles that pass through the cell. Luis Enjuanes, head of the CNB coronavirus laboratory, recalls another of his pillars: “Messenger RNA generates a stronger immune response.”
For her part, Isabel Sola, co-director of the Coronavirus group, highlights the work of Karikó and Weismann as a great example of basic science that had its great opportunity in the emergency caused by the pandemic. “They were based on the observation that a molecule like messenger RNA did not trigger an immune response in the cell, but foreign mRNA did. Why did cells differentiate between what is their own and what is not their own,” he comments. Based on this, they turned it into a potentially therapeutic molecule “to deliver messages to the cell,” as Sola put it. They tested it against other pathogens, but Sola concludes: “The big opportunity was the coronavirus, a very specific virus against which vaccines worked phenomenally.” Both Sola, Enjuanes and Esteban end with two ideas: It is one absolutely deserved award and a great example of persistence, especially from Karikó, who never gave up despite the many doors thrown at her and her work.
Ana Fernández Sesma, researcher and virologist, professor and director of the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinaí in New York, highlights another aspect in statements to SMC Spain: “It is a joy and above all that. “It was awarded to a woman of whom, as we know, there are very few [entre las laureadas]and it is absolutely deserved.”
The Nobel jury also emphasizes the importance of this technology for the future: “The impressive flexibility and speed with which mRNA vaccines can be developed pave the way for the new platform to also be used for vaccines against other infectious diseases.” “In the future “The technology could also be used to deliver therapeutic proteins and treat some types of cancer,” they say.
In the 2022 edition, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Swedish biologist Svante Pääbo for “his discoveries about the genome of extinct hominids and human evolution.” Pääbo is one of the pioneers of ancient DNA research and creator of a new discipline, paleogenomics. Studying the past from the perspective of genetics is one of the most fruitful paths, especially to learn and understand human evolution. In 2018, Pääbo received the Princess of Asturias Prize for her work in this field, with the Spanish prize again being an evolution of the Nobel Prize. The winners of last year’s edition were David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian, who discovered the receptors through which the nervous system senses heat or caresses. There were three winners in 2020, this time for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Its discoverers and saviors of millions of lives were the American virologists Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice and the Briton Michael Houghton.
The prize is endowed with ten million Swedish crowns, around 985,000 euros. This prize opens this week’s round of announcements, which continues on Tuesday with the Physics Prize, on Wednesday with the Chemistry Prize, on Thursday with the Literature Prize and on Friday with the Peace Prize.
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