Nobel Prize recognizes scientists who laid groundwork for COVID-19 vaccines

A couple of scientists who invented the technique that led to the mRNA Covid vaccinations have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The award will be shared by Prof Katalin Kariko and Prof Drew Weissman.

Prior to the pandemic, the technology was experimental, but it is now available to millions of people worldwide.

The same mRNA technique is currently being investigated for the treatment of other disorders, including cancer.

The Committee for the Nobel Prize stated: "The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times."

Also Read: Spain's President Pedro Sánchez joins Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in skipping G20 Summit due to COVID-19

Both were "overwhelmed" when they were told they had won via phone this morning.

Vaccines teach the immune system to spot and combat dangers like viruses and bacteria.

Traditional vaccine technology relied on dead or weakened forms of the original virus or bacteria, or on infectious agent fragments.

mRNA vaccines, on the other hand, used an entirely different strategy.

The Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines were both based on mRNA technology during the Covid pandemic.

Drs Kariko and Weissman met in the early 1990s at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, when their interest in mRNA was considered a scientific backwater.

In the human body, RNA technology functions as a translator.

It translates DNA's language from a collection of genetic instructions into the proteins that create and run our bodies.

The goal of mRNA vaccines is to infiltrate that process. If you can create mRNA that creates pieces of a virus or another illness, the body will build those foreign proteins and the immune system will learn how to fight them.

There were issues in the beginning. However, by fine-tuning the technique, the researchers were able to manufacture high amounts of the desired protein while avoiding the harmful levels of inflammation reported in animal trials.

This cleared the door for the development of vaccination technology in humans.

During Covid, mRNA vaccines were created to manufacture the "spike protein" of Covid.

Katalin Kariko is now a professor at Hungary's Szeged University, while Drew Weissman is still a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.