For science, it was a lightning quick recognition. Three years after the first mRNA-based vaccines became available, to prevent COVID-19, the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded to two scientists who made those vaccines possible. Katalin Kariko and Dr. Drew Weissman were recognized for their work modifying the genetic material mRNA to make it more useful in treatments like vaccines.

When they met at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1990s, Kariko had been a longtime champion of mRNA technology, but struggled to convince the rest of the scientific community of its promise since RNA was notoriously unstable and had not produced any meaningful treatments. Weissman was working on developing an HIV vaccine, and thought an mRNA approach might be worth a try. The rest is now Nobel history.

Here are some of the highlights of their journey:

• mRNA theoretically held a lot of promise in being able to treat genetic and infectious diseases, but also tended to aggravate the immune system, creating a dangerous inflammatory reaction.
• Kariko and Weissman spent decades figuring out that changing the mRNA code slightly would make it less prone to stimulating this aggressive inflammatory response.
• Their discovery made the COVID-19 vaccines possible, and is now being studied in vaccines against other infectious diseases, as well as against cancer.

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