The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to two scientists whose discoveries were crucial in developing mRNA vaccines during the Covid-19 outbreak.
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman were awarded the prize, the Nobel committee said Monday. The findings of Karikó, a professor at Szeged University in Hungary, and Weissman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, have changed the way scientists understand how mRNA vaccines interact with immune systems.
“The laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” the commitee said in a press release statement. The scientists will share the prize of about $1 million.
The research done by the two scientists was crucial for the technology used by the
Pfizer
(PFE) and
BioNTech
(BNTX) partnership and
Moderna
(MRNA) in developing their Covid-19 vaccines.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 vaccine tracker for the U.S., 676.7 million vaccination doses have been administered in the U.S. and 81.4% of the country’s population has been vaccinated with at least one dose.
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