STOCKHOLM: 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.
“The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” the Swedish award-giving body said in the latest accolade for the pair.
The prize, among the most prestigious in the scientific world, was selected by the Nobel Assembly of 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, is a professor at the University of Szeged in Hungary and adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In an interview after the award, she said her late mother had long speculated that she might win the Nobel - to which she would remind her there was a time when she could not even get a grant for her research.
“She (my mother) said, ‘but you work so hard’. And I told her that many, many scientists work very, very hard,” added Kariko, who was sleeping when she received the call from Stockholm and initially thought it was a joke.
Co-winner Weissman, a professor in vaccine research also at Pennsylvania, said it was a “lifetime dream” to win and recalled working intensely with Kariko - including middle-of-the-night emails as they both suffered disturbed sleep.
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