Nobel Prize in Medicine: K. Karikó and D. Weissman awarded for their work on mRNA - Featured

2023-10-02 14:48:43

October 02, 2023

The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded on Monday October 2 to the Hungarian Katalin Karikó and the American Drew Weissman, biochemist and immunologist respectively, for their discoveries on messenger RNA. Discoveries which enabled the development of a vaccine against Covid-19.

Nobel season is open. Like every year, it was the Nobel Prize in Medicine which opened the ball on Monday October 2. The Nobel committee chose to distinguish two researchers, the Hungarian Katalin Karikó and the American Drew Weissman, for their discoveries which made it possible to develop messenger RNA vaccines against Covid-19. “The research of the two Nobel laureates was essential to the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic that began in early 2020,” notes in a press release, the Nobel Prize organization. “With their groundbreaking discoveries, which fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the winners have contributed to the development of vaccines at an unprecedented pace against one of the greatest threats to health human in modern times. »

Work published in 2005

Messenger RNA or messenger ribonucleotide acid (RNA) transmits, outside the cell nucleus, the genetic information of a cell, hence its name messenger. This information is used by ribosomes which read the message, translate it and make the corresponding proteins that the cells need to live. Researchers wanted to use the messenger RNA of a virus to make a vaccine.

In traditional vaccines, it is an inactivated or attenuated infectious agent or even certain of its proteins which are inoculated so that the body learns to fight them and remembers them. “With messenger RNA vaccines, the idea is to let our cells produce themselves the component against which our body will learn to defend itself. Concretely, it is therefore a question of administering a messenger RNA which corresponds to the plan for manufacturing a protein of the targeted microbe, which does not risk making us sick but against which the body will train itself to fight. explains Inserm.

But the first messenger RNAs produced in vitro gave rise to inflammatory reactions. Biochemist Katalin Karikó and immunologist Drew Weissman, then colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and distinguished this Monday in Stockholm, together discovered how to put an end to this inflammatory response. This work, which opened the way to the use of mRNA for therapeutic purposes, was published in 2005, 15 years before the development of the first messenger RNA vaccine.

Source : The Nobel Prize – Inserm, Trade secret: what is messenger RNA?
Written by : Dorothée Duchemin – edited by Emmanuel Ducreuzet