COVID vaccine pioneers win Nobel Prize

Two scientists whose discoveries were instrumental in creating the mRNA shots against COVID-19 won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday.

Hungarian American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman were awarded the prize Monday for “their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.”

“Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,”  the panel that awarded the prize in Stockholm said in a press release. 

The mRNA technology behind the COVID-19 vaccines was a pivot away from the traditional method of creating vaccines, which typically required growing bits of viruses and then purifying them before creating the shots. 

Usually, injecting a lab-grown mRNA into the body would cause a reaction that would destroy it, but Karikó — a professor at Szeged University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania — and Weissman, of the University of Pennsylvania, discovered an adjustment in the process that would avoid that reaction. 

Now, this kind of technology is being used to develop more vaccines against other infectious diseases and may be used to treat certain kinds of cancer. 

The press release noted that the vaccines saved millions of lives and prevented severe in several more, which is how communities were able to reopen after being shut down during the pandemic. 

The Associated Press contributed.