October 4, 2023, SEOUL, Republic of Korea — Professors Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, honored with the 2022 IVI – SK bioscience Park MahnHoon Award, have been named laureates of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is delighted to join the global health and vaccine community in extending our warmest congratulations to Profs. Karikó and Weissman.
Prof. Karikó, a biochemist and Senior Vice President at BioNTech, professor at Szeged University in Hungary and adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in the US, and Prof. Weissman, a physician and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, were also the inaugural recipients of the IVI – SK bioscience Park MahnHoon Award in 2022.
Their groundbreaking work in the field of modified mRNA technology, utilized in vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, has been recognized with the Nobel Prize.
“The discoveries by the two Nobel laureates were critical for developing effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic,” the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden said. “Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.”
These visionary scientists collaborated to devise a method to modify mRNA and subsequently developed a delivery technique for encapsulating the mRNA within fat droplets called lipid nanoparticles. This revolutionary development enabled mRNA to trigger the body’s immune system to fight disease. The novel innovation made mRNA safe, effective, and practical for use, paving the way for the creation of the two highly effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. These vaccines played a pivotal role in the world’s fight against the pandemic, saving millions of lives.
Upon receiving the Park MahnHoon Award in April 2022, Prof. Karikó said, “The success of the mRNA vaccine technology demonstrates the power of innovation and the importance of persistence. As a scientist, I focused my entire career on developing mRNA for therapy. I am incredibly pleased that the technology that I helped make possible is today saving millions of lives and has even more applications for the future.”
Prof. Weissman said at the time, “I hope that we can help mRNA vaccines develop more in various fields including gene therapy for cancer, other than coronavirus vaccines.”
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About the International Vaccine Institute (IVI)
The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is a non-profit international organization established in 1997 at the initiative of the United Nations Development Programme with a mission to discover, develop, and deliver safe, effective, and affordable vaccines for global health.
IVI’s current portfolio includes vaccines at all stages of pre-clinical and clinical development for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries, such as cholera, typhoid, chikungunya, shigella, salmonella, schistosomiasis, hepatitis E, HPV, COVID-19, and more. IVI developed the world’s first low-cost oral cholera vaccine, pre-qualified by the World Health Organization (WHO), and developed a new-generation typhoid conjugate vaccine that is currently under assessment for WHO PQ.
IVI is headquartered in Seoul, Republic of Korea with a Europe Regional Office in Sweden and Collaborating Centers in Ghana, Ethiopia, and Madagascar. 39 countries and the WHO are members of IVI, and the governments of the Republic of Korea, Sweden, India, Finland, and Thailand provide state funding. For more information, please visit https://www.ivi.int.