It’s October, and as the autumn leaves come tumbling down(that’s enough lyrics-ed) we find ourselves hailing the greatest prizes on the planet-the Nobels.
First up is Phisiology or Medicine. If ever one was well deserved, this was it. The fact thta we have started finally wriggled free of COVID-19 (sort of) is largely down to these two: Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman. We’ve posted the story and links from Nature Briefings. But it’s scary to think that Kariko almost left biosciences in the 1990s, when mRNA was a poor Cinderella and all the clever money was on DNA. So before we get too sniffy about Sun readers, let’s remember that educated people can make mistakes too.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to biochemist Katalin Karikó and immunologist Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the development of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines against COVID-19. The vaccines have been administered more than 13 billion times, saved millions of lives and prevented severe illness in millions of people. Karikó and Weissman discovered a way to deliver mRNA into cells without triggering an unwanted immune response: by swapping one type of molecule, uridine, in the genetic material with a similar one called pseudouridine.
In 2021, in this newsletter, Nature Chief Magazine Editor Helen Pearson recommended a profile of Karikó in The New York Times. “First for showing how the spectacularly fast production of COVID-19 vaccines actually rests on decades of meticulous basic research into mRNA, and second for highlighting the difficulty that many scientists face when moving precariously from one temporary position to another to pursue the bench research they love.”
Later that year, Karikó and Weissman won one of the most lucrative awards in science: the US$3-million Breakthrough Prize. Karikó recalled the scepticism surrounding her work in the 1990s that led to numerous grant-proposal and paper rejections (including the 2005 paper for which she is now being recognized), and forced her to take a demotion and a pay cut.Nature | 5 min read
Read more: After COVID-19 success, mRNA vaccine developers turn their eyes to cancer, HIV, malaria, influenza and more (Nature Medicine | 11 min read, from 2021)
Reference: Immunity paper (from 2005)
#mRNA #medicine #phisiology #covid-19 # SARS
Learning, Science and Society 
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