The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded on Monday to Hungarian Katalin Kariko and American Drew Weissman for their advances in messenger RNA vaccines, which are crucial in the fight against Covid-19.
• Also read: COVID, the return: What you need to know for this fall
The two researchers were “recognized for their discoveries regarding the modifications of nucleic acid bases that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against Covid-19,” said the jury.
“The winners have contributed at an unprecedented pace to the development of vaccines in response to one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” he added.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to the pioneer of paleogenomics, Swede Svante Pääbo, for completely sequencing the Neanderthal genome and founding the discipline, which explores DNA from the depths of history to shed light on modern humans throw genes.
The prize is endowed with eleven million crowns (920,000 euros), the highest nominal value (in Swedish currency) in the more than hundred-year history of the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Foundation announced in mid-September that it had increased the amount of this endowment due to its improved financial situation.
The Nobel season continues in Stockholm on Tuesday with physics, then chemistry on Wednesday, before the much-anticipated literary prizes on Thursday and the Peace Prize, the only prize given in Oslo, on Friday. The latest Economy Prize concludes the year next Monday.