Metropolis Desk-
Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and US colleague Drew Weissman have won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work on mRNA molecule discoveries that led to the development of COVID-19 vaccines.
The prize, among the most prestigious in the scientific world, was selected by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute Medical University and comes with 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million) to share between them.
Kariko, a former senior vice president and head of RNA protein replacement at German biotech firm BioNTech, and Weissman, a professor in vaccine research at Pennsylvania, jointly developed nucleoside base modifications in 2005 to prevent the immune system from attacking lab-made mRNA.
BioNTech announced that about 1.5 billion people worldwide had received its mRNA shot, co-developed with Pfizer PFE.N., the most widely-used shot in the West.
