Biochemist Katalin Karikó and immunologist Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Monday for their foundational research showing that chemical modifications to the molecular building blocks of messenger RNA (mRNA) could enable its use for therapeutics and vaccines—a realization crucial to the rapid development of the life-saving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines during the deadly pandemic.
In our cells, mRNA is an intermediate molecule, a single-stranded copy of coding from the genes in our DNA blueprints that is then translated into functional proteins.
She could not win scientific grants to fund her work and, in 1995, after years of toiling, her bosses at UPenn gave her the choice of either leaving or getting demoted.
Around the same time, other researchers found evidence that some key proteins that regulate inflammation—toll-like receptors (TLRs)—specifically detect modifications on DNA and RNA to trigger inflammation responses.
However, the finding received little fanfare among much of the scientific community at the time, and Karikó’s research and contribution continued to go largely unappreciated before the pandemic.
“Ten years ago, I was here in October, because I was kicked out from Penn, was forced to retire,” she said in an early morning interview Monday with the Nobel Assembly.
The original article contains 711 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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Biochemist Katalin Karikó and immunologist Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Monday for their foundational research showing that chemical modifications to the molecular building blocks of messenger RNA (mRNA) could enable its use for therapeutics and vaccines—a realization crucial to the rapid development of the life-saving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines during the deadly pandemic.
In our cells, mRNA is an intermediate molecule, a single-stranded copy of coding from the genes in our DNA blueprints that is then translated into functional proteins.
She could not win scientific grants to fund her work and, in 1995, after years of toiling, her bosses at UPenn gave her the choice of either leaving or getting demoted.
Around the same time, other researchers found evidence that some key proteins that regulate inflammation—toll-like receptors (TLRs)—specifically detect modifications on DNA and RNA to trigger inflammation responses.
However, the finding received little fanfare among much of the scientific community at the time, and Karikó’s research and contribution continued to go largely unappreciated before the pandemic.
“Ten years ago, I was here in October, because I was kicked out from Penn, was forced to retire,” she said in an early morning interview Monday with the Nobel Assembly.
The original article contains 711 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 72%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!