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University of Pennsylvania mRNA Biology Pioneers Receive COVID-19 Vaccine Enabled by their Foundational Research
PHILADELPHIA- The scientific team whose 2005 messenger RNA biology discovery at the University of Pennsylvania helped pave the way for the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna received their first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine together on Friday, Dec. 18 at Penn, more than 20 years after they began their basic science collaboration.
Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, a professor of Infectious Diseases in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Katalin Karikó, PhD, an adjunct associate professor at Penn and a senior vice president at BioNTech, together discovered that exchanging one of the four building blocks of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) molecules could greatly increase its therapeutic potential. They shared their perspectives as longtime researchers in the field who are comfortable taking the vaccines themselves, and called on the public t