Nobel Prize in Medicine for mRNA Vaccines against COVID-19

Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, reported the Nobelprize.org website.

They were awarded the prize by the Royal Karolinska Institute of Medicine for their discoveries related to modifications of nucleotide bases that enabled the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

The discoveries of the two laureates are essential to the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic that began in early 2020. "Through their ground-breaking work that fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, Kariko and Weissman contributed to the unprecedented rapid development of a vaccine during one of the most threatening human pandemics of our time", said Thomas Perlman, secretary general of the Nobel Committee.

This year, the prize money is 11 million kroner (around 985,000 US dollars). It is divided among the laureates.

The first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1901 to Emil Adolf von Behring of Germany "for his work on serum therapy, especially for its application to diphtheria, thereby opening a new path for medical science and giving physicians a victorious remedy against sickness and death".

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