Nobel Medicine Prize 2023 awarded to mRNA COVID-19 vaccine researchers

The Nobel Medicine Prize for the year 2023 has been awarded to mRNA COVID-19 vaccine researchers!

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet on Monday decided to award the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and U.S. colleague Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

BREAKING NEWS
The 2023 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/Y62uJDlNMj

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 2, 2023

The pair, who had been tipped as favourites, “contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times”, the jury said.

Together with other Covid vaccines, they “have saved millions of lives and prevented severe disease in many more”, the jury added.

Kariko, 68, and Weissman, 64, are longstanding colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States and have already won a slew of awards for their research.

They met in line for a photocopier before making mRNA molecule discoveries that paved the way for COVID-19 vaccines.