Nobel Prize goes to scientists behind mRNA Covid vaccines

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine-2023 was awarded jointly to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19”.

Dr Katalin Kariko and Dr Drew Weissman will share the prize.

The technology was experimental before the pandemic, but has now been given to millions of people around the world.

The same mRNA technology is now being researched for other diseases and even cancer.

The Nobel Prize committee said: "The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times."

Both were told they had won by telephone this morning and were said to be "overwhelmed".

Professor Kariko and Professor Weissman met in the early 1990s when they were working at the University of Pennsylvania, in the United States, when their interest in mRNA was seen as a scientific backwater.

Katalin Kariko is now a professor at Szeged University in Hungary and Drew Weissman is still working as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.