The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet announced today that they have awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman “for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.” Karikó and Weissman were elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2022. Karikó is an adjunct professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Weissman is the Roberts Family Professor of Vaccine Research at the Perelman School of Medicine.
The two laureates’ discoveries shed new light on how mRNA interacts with the immune system and fundamentally changed the field of vaccine development. Their work was crucial to developing effective vaccines against COVID-19. Read the full press release on NobelPrize.org.
The NAM congratulates the two laureates on their tremendous contributions and well-deserved recognition.
