From COVID to cancer: High hopes for Nobel mRNA vaccines medicalxpress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from medicalxpress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The coronavirus pandemic brought global renown to the mRNA technology that underpins vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, and on Monday earned a Nobel Prize for two scientists who have been key to its development. Katalin Kariko of Hungary and Drew Weissman of the United States won the Nobel Medicine Prize for their work on "nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19".
Two companies with local ties are leading the race for approval of a coronavirus vaccine, but this story is also so much more. It’s also about dreams raised and dashed, of billions at risk and perhaps to be made, and an unproven genetic technology that just might save the world.
Dr. Drew Weissman, a Lexington native who on Monday won the Nobel Prize in medicine with Dr. Katalin Karikó for their mRNA research that helped make the COVID-19 vaccine possible, told reporters Monday that he received a “cryptic” text message from his colleague alluding to something big.