Penn Medicine scientists Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries enabling the growth of mRNA vaccines.
| Photo Credit: Peggy Peterson/Penn Medicine, Reuters
The 2023 Nobel Prize for physiology or medication has been awarded to the Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó and the American physician-scientist Drew Weissman. According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, they’ve been feted for “discoveries concerning nucleoside base modification that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19”.
Dr. Karikó is barely the thirteenth lady to win the prize.
That the quotation mentions the pandemic is testomony to the impact mRNA vaccines had on its evolution in addition to how the world catastrophe turned a chance for these vaccines’ technology to showcase its potential.
mRNA stands for messenger RNA, a sort of molecule that carries directions from the DNA to a cell’s cytoplasm, the place these messages are ‘read’ to provide varied proteins. In the late Eighties, scientists realised that mRNA might turn out to be the foundation for a brand new type of vaccines if some hurdles could possibly be overcome.
The concept was to inject the physique with a modified mRNA that would instruct cells to construct a sure protein, which might then provoke the physique’s immune system to ‘attack’ it in addition to put together itself to encounters with the similar protein in future. This protein could possibly be one thing produced by a virus – resembling the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. But the mRNA must survive its journey inside the physique and be capable to enter a cell.
Dr. Karikó and Dr. Weissman started to collaborate in the late Nineties. They and different scientists revealed many research till 2004 elucidating the steps from delivering mRNA right into a physique (resembling of a rat) to the immune system responding. But one downside remained. The immune system sensed the artificial mRNA to be a international substance that wanted to be eradicated however not the cells’ mRNA. Why?
A examine the duo revealed in 2005, with Michael Buckstein and Houping Ni, had the reply: the cells’ mRNA underwent chemical reactions that modified it in sure methods, whereas the artificial mRNA remained unchanged.
RNA is made up of smaller molecules known as bases. Dr. Karikó and Dr. Weissman reported that once they modified a few of these bases in the artificial mRNA and delivered it to cells, the cells produced extra provocative proteins than they did with out the modifications. They had came upon how international mRNA might enter a physique after which its cells with out setting off alarm bells.
They revealed two extra research that set the stage for the use of an mRNA platform for a brand new type of vaccine. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic dawned on the world, and mRNA vaccines performed a pivotal function – if additionally one overtaken by the doubtful virtues of vaccine nationalism – in reducing its loss of life toll.
“You can start a production cycle in the morning and by evening have enough for tests,” former Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, director Govindarajan Padmanabhan advised The Hindu in October 2022 about the benefit of mRNA vaccines. Currently, scientists are exploring their use in opposition to influenza, dengue, and a few cancers and auto-immune illnesses.
