The COVID-19 shots that seemed to appear overnight were built on decades of work by Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, says Bloomberg Opinion columnist Lisa Jarvis.
US physician-scientist Drew Weissman along with his long-time collaborator Katalin Kariko of Hungary won the 2023 Nobel Medicine Prize for mRNA vaccine research. It’s hard to imagine a more deserving Nobel Prize than one for an achievement credited with saving millions of lives. And we might never have gotten here if scientists like Kariko hadn’t persisted in the face of doubt.
Kariko and Weissman are credited with cracking the last item on that list. By swapping out a basic building block of mRNA called uridine for a related molecule called pseudouridine, strands of mRNA could get their message to cells without triggering an immune attack. Kariko’s struggle to convince the world of mRNA’s value ultimately pushed her out of academia and to BioNTech, which she joined in 2013. By then, investors had started to come around to the idea that mRNA could be useful. But only a handful of companies were pursuing the idea.
Yet for mRNA’s full potential to be realised - and Kariko’s dream of turning it into a therapeutic - the field will need another dose of her brand of intense determination. While undeniably world-changing, vaccines are also the low-hanging fruit of the mRNA world. To work, they only need to coax cells into making a fleeting amount of protein - enough to train the immune system so that it can eventually spot the real virus.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Hungarian, US scientists win Nobel Prize for Covid-19 vaccine workThe prize is selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university. Read more at straitstimes.com.
Read more »
Hungarian and US scientists win medicine Nobel for COVID-19 vaccine workSTOCKHOLM: Scientists Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman from Hungary and the United States respectively won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries enabling the development of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, the award-giving body said on Monday (Oct 2). The prize, among the
Read more »
Hungarian and US scientists win medicine Nobel for Covid-19 vaccine workThe prize is selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university. Read more at straitstimes.com.
Read more »
Hungarian and US scientists win medicine Nobel for Covid-19 vaccine discoveriesSTOCKHOLM — Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and United States colleague Drew Weissman, who met in line for a photocopier before making mRNA molecule discoveries together that paved the way for Covid-19 vaccines, won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday (Oct 2).
Read more »
Commentary: Hollywood strike shows workers could be the ones to regulate AIAs tech titans and lawmakers argue, the Hollywood writers’ strike has shown how employees can set the rules, says the Financial Times’ Rana Foroohar.
Read more »
Commentary: Here’s how people with diabetes can still enjoy hawker food without fearContrary to what some people might think, no food is off-limits to people living with diabetes.
Read more »