COVID-19 vaccine developers win Nobel Prize

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine has been awarded to Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and American Drew Weissman.

The announcement was made by the Nobel Committee of the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm, Caliber.Az reports, citing CNN.

The scientists won the prize “for their discoveries in the field of modification of nucleic acid bases, which made it possible to develop effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19," the motivation part of the committee's decision reads.

The committee praised the scientists’ “groundbreaking findings” which “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,” the committee added in a statement.

The prize money this year was increased by 1 million kronor to 11 million kronor (just over $1 million, or slightly under €1 million) because of the plunging value of the Swedish currency.

The Nobel Prize is considered the most prestigious award in the fields in which it is presented.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded 113 times since the prize's first year in 1901. It's gone to 225 scientists, but only 12 women.

Messenger RNA is a single strand of the genetic code that cells can “read” and use to make a protein. In the case of this vaccine, the mRNA instructs cells in the body to make the particular piece of the virus’s spike protein. Then the immune system sees it, recognizes it as foreign and is prepared to attack when actual infection occurs.