Nobel: Winner didn’t believe the announcement and remembered her mother – 10/02/2023 – Balance and Health

Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó, 68, says she couldn’t believe she had been chosen for this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine alongside American colleague Drew Weissman, 64. The two were awarded for their work on messenger RNA, which paved the way for the development of vaccines against Covid-19.

The scientist told Swedish radio SR that she didn’t believe the Nobel news at first and that she followed the ceremony live, with a lot of emotion.

Karikó also said that he thought about his mother, now deceased, who listened to the Nobel announcement with the hope that her daughter’s name would be mentioned. “She listened every year. Unfortunately, she died five years ago, at the age of 89. Maybe she will hear us in heaven,” she said.

The Nobel is particularly gratifying for the researcher, the 13th woman to win the Medicine prize, as for years she worked in the shadows and fought hard to convince her superiors of the importance of studying messenger RNA.

Karikó did not obtain subsidies for her research and was appointed to minor positions at the University of Pennsylvania, in the United States, where she developed her studies.

Recognition

Karikó and Weissman work together at the University of Pennsylvania and have already won several awards for their work, including the Lasker Award, considered an honor that precedes the Nobel Prize.

They also won the Princess of Asturias Award in 2021, which they shared with other scientists.

“The winners contributed to the development, at an unprecedented rate, of a vaccine during one of the greatest threats to humanity’s health in modern times,” explained the Nobel committee.

Unlike traditional vaccines, which use weakened viruses or pieces of virus proteins, the messenger RNA technique uses molecules that tell cells which proteins to produce.

The process simulates an infection and trains the immune system to face a real virus.

The idea was first demonstrated in 1990, but it was only in the mid-2000s that Weissman and Karikó developed a way to control the inflammatory response that animals suffered in experiments, paving the way for the development of safe vaccines for humans.