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Meet Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman: The winners of Nobel Prize 2023 for medicine!

By alagu, 02 October, 2023
Nobel Prize, COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccine

The Nobel Prize 2023 in Medicine has been awarded to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for their crucial discovery and development of vaccines against COVID-19. The duo will share the prestigious honour as their contributions towards defeating what haunted the globe have now been conferred them with a global compliment. 

68-year-old Katalin Kariko is a Hungarian-American biochemist while her fellow winner of the prize, 64-year-old Drew Weissman is an American physician and scientist. The duo had developed the technology that led to the mRNA (messenger Ribonucleic Acid) Covid vaccines. Awarding the pair with the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Prize Committee has said, "The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times." 

Taking to X (formerly known as Twitter), the Nobel Prize Committee wrote, "The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19." According to BBC, the technology that they had developed was experimental before the pandemic, but has now been given to millions of people around the world to protect them against serious Covid-19. 

Significantly, the same mRNA technology, that they developed, is now being researched for other diseases including cancer. The Nobel Prize for Medicine has been considered as a prestigious honour in the scientific community and the winners for it are selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute. Notably, the recipients of the prize will receive 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million) for their contributions. 

Both the winners, Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, have been surfaced with commendations from across the world as several scientists and medical professionals extend their greetings to the winners and hail their contributions in developing a Covid vaccine. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of World Health Organization, took to social media and wrote, "Huge congratulations to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for winning the 2023 Physiology or Medicine Nobel Prize for their discoveries that enabled the development of effective COVID19 mRNA vaccines. Their dedication to science helped save lives."

 

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