Katalin Kariko of Hungary and Drew Weissman of the United States have been awarded the prestigious 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their groundbreaking discoveries that played a pivotal role in the development of highly effective mRNA vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Who is Katalin Kariko?
Nobel laureate Kariko is a Hungarian-American biochemist and researcher who has had an illustrious career as a professor at the esteemed Szeged University and as an adjunct professor at the prestigious Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Born in 1955 in the city of Szolnok, Hungary, she earned her bachelor's degree in biology in 1978 and her doctorate in biochemistry in 1982 from Szeged University.
Until 1985, Kariko pursued postdoctoral research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged.
After moving to the US, Kariko continued her postdoctoral research at Temple University, Philadelphia, and the University of Health Science, Bethesda.
In 1989, Kariko was appointed assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania where she worked for 24 years until 2013.
She was later appointed vice president and senior vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals.
Who is Drew Weissman?
At 64, Weissman holds the esteemed position of Roberts family professor in Vaccine Research and serves as the director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations at the University of Pennsylvania.
His decades of research into mRNA technology paved the way for COVID-19 vaccines.
Born in 1959 in Lexington, Massachusetts, Weissman did his B.A. in Biochemistry and M.A. in Enzymology from Brandeis University in 1981.
In 1987, Weissman received his MD in immunology and Ph.D. in microbiology from Boston University.
He then did his clinical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, and postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health.
In 1997, Weissman established his research group at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Weissman and Kariko have been collaborating since 1997, making groundbreaking discoveries that have been instrumental in the development of highly effective mRNA vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic.