<\/p>\n
Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and US colleague Drew Weissman, who met in line for a photocopier before making mRNA molecule discoveries that paved the way for Covid-19 vaccines, won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,\u201d the Swedish award-giving body said in the latest accolade for the pair.<\/p>\n
The prize, among the most prestigious in the scientific world, was selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden\u2019s Karolinska Institute medical university and comes with 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1m) to share between them.<\/p>\n
Kariko, a former senior vice president and head of RNA protein replacement at German biotech firm BioNTech, is a professor at the University of Szeged in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not working for any kind of reward,\u201d Kariko, who struggled for years to find grants for her research, said in remarks alongside Weissman at UPenn\u2019s Philadelphia campus, a few hours after she was awoken by the call from Stockholm. \u201cThe importance was to have a product which is helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Co-winner Weissman, a professor in vaccine research also at UPenn, said it was a \u201clifetime dream\u201d to win and recalled working intensely with Kariko for more than 20 years, including middle-of-the-night emails as they both suffered disturbed sleep.<\/p>\n
In 2005, Kariko and Weissman developed so-called nucleoside base modifications, which stop the immune system from launching an inflammatory attack against lab-made mRNA, previously seen as a major hurdle against any therapeutic use of the technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t get people to notice RNA as something interesting,\u201d Weissman said on Monday. \u201cPretty much everybody gave up on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
BioNTech said in June that about 1.5 billion people across the world had received its mRNA shot, co-developed with Pfizer. It was the most widely used shot in the West.<\/p>\n
Having grown up in a village in a house without running water or a refrigerator, Kariko got a biochemistry doctorate in Szeged before she and her husband sold their Soviet-made Lada car, sewed some cash into their daughter\u2019s teddy bear and went to the US on a one-way ticket.<\/p>\n
The daughter, Susan Francia, became a US national rower and Olympic gold winner.<\/p>\n
At UPenn, Kariko tried to turn mRNA into a treatment tool throughout the 1990s but struggled to win grants because work on DNA and gene therapy captured most of the scientific community\u2019s attention at the time.<\/p>\n
Kariko has said she endured ridicule from university colleagues for her dogged pursuit and her failure to secure research grants led to UPenn demoting her from a full-time professor track in 1995.<\/p>\n
Weissman received his doctorate from Boston University in 1987 and joined UPenn in 1997.<\/p>\n
The two have said they met and began chatting in 1998 while waiting for rationed photocopying machine time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe you have some more copy machines now,\u201d Kariko said at UPenn on Monday. \u201cI bragged about how I can do RNA, and Drew was interested in vaccines, and that is how our collaboration started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sir Andrew Pollard, an immunology professor at Oxford University who pursued a different technology when co-developing the lesser-used Covid vaccine by AstraZeneca, said it was \u201cabsolutely right that the ground-breaking work\u201d done by Kariko and Weissman should be recognised by the Nobel committee.<\/p>\n