The physiology or medicine prize for Hungarian and American Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman recognized work that led to the development of vaccines that were administered to billions around the world.
So these guys saved millions of lives, but thanks to Republican political games, they will probably be getting death threats from the MAGA crowd.
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, who together identified a chemical tweak to messenger RNA that laid the foundation for vaccines against Covid-19 that have since been administered billions of times globally, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on Monday.
Their discovery “fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system,” the panel that awarded the prize said, adding that the work “contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.”
A huge breakthrough, hopefully this leads to a whole new class of mRNA vaccines.
Very well deserved award. Her sharp focus on mRNA through many years, even without the support of academic institutions, allowed her to achieve the breakthroughs needed to develop the new gen of vaccines. Per the NYT article:
But for many years her career at the University of Pennsylvania was fragile. She migrated from lab to lab, relying on one senior scientist after another to take her in. She never made more than $60,000 a year. Dr. Kariko’s struggles to stay afloat in academia have a familiar ring to scientists. She needed grants to pursue ideas that seemed wild and fanciful. She did not get them, even as more mundane research was rewarded.
Between 1985 and 1988, while serving as postdoctoral fellow at Temple University in Philadelphia and Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD, (88–89) Karikó participated in a clinical trial in which patients with AIDS, hematologic diseases, and chronic fatigue syndrome were treated with double stranded RNA (dsRNA). At the time, this was considered groundbreaking research, as the molecular mechanism of interferon induction by dsRNA was not known, although the antiviral and antineoplastic effects of interferon were well documented.[18]
-wikipedia
This will upset some very stupid people.
That’s another BIG upside!
