Nobel Prize in Medicine 2023: Carrico and Weissmann awarded for their work on RNA technology

Katalin Carrico and Drew Weisman are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work on RNA technology. In particular, the Hungarian Cariko and the American Wiseman are awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work in the field of messenger RNA vaccines, which proved to be of decisive importance in the fight against Covid-19.

The two researchers were distinguished “for their discoveries about the conversions of nucleic bases that allowed the development of mRNA vaccines effective against Covid-19”, announced the Nobel Prize Committee.

“The laureates have contributed to the development of vaccines at an unprecedented pace in the face of one of the greatest threats to human health in the modern era,” the commission said in a statement.

Katalin Carrico: The pioneering, and tenacious, research biochemist behind messenger RNA technology

He was born in Hungary and lives in Pennsylvania. Biochemist researcher Katalin Carrico developed such an obsession with the technology called messenger RNA that it cost her a professorship at a prominent university.

It should be noted that few could have imagined that this method of gene therapy and the persistent work of this biochemist would lay the groundwork for the development of Pfizer/BionTech and Moderna’s vaccines against Covid-19.

Somehow, the unknown and marginalized researcher Katalin Kariko is now considered a pioneer.

“It’s just unbelievable,” she said in December 2020 in an interview with AFP (Agence France-Presse) from her home in Philadelphia. The 65-year-old scientist confesses that it is difficult for her to step into the limelight after so many difficult years in the shadows.

Her case, she says, illustrates “the need to support science at various levels.”

Katalin Carrico spent much of her time in the 1990s seeking funding for her research focused on messenger ribonucleic acid (RNA), the molecules that instruct the cell to use, in the form of a genetic code, to produce proteins beneficial for our body.

The biochemist believed that messenger RNA could play a key role in the treatment of certain diseases, such as in the treatment of brain tissue after a stroke.

But the University of Pennsylvania, where Kathleen Carrico was about to take a professorship, put an end to her path, after successive rejections of her research grant applications.

“I was about to be promoted and then just then they demoted me expecting me to leave,” he recalls.

At the time, the biochemist did not yet have a U.S. permanent resident green card and needed to find a job to renew her visa. At the same time, she knew that it would be difficult for her to finance her daughter’s university studies with her low salary.

Nevertheless, she decided to persevere with her research, despite the difficulty of the undertaking which meant the lack of funding. “I said, the (laboratory) bench is there, I just have to do better experiments.”

“Think properly and, finally, ask yourself: ‘What can I do?’ That’s how you don’t waste your life”, is her motto.

This determination, the biochemist has passed on… through her genes: her daughter, Susan Francia, graduated from the famous University of Pennsylvania, but also won a gold medal in rowing with the USA team at the 2008 and 2008 Olympic Games. 2012, according to the Athens News Agency.

DNA, the most famous big brother

At the end of the 1980s, the scientific community had only eyes for DNA, which they considered potentially capable of transforming cells and, from this point, treating diseases such as cancer or cystic fibrosis.

But Katalin Carrico was interested in messenger RNA, imagining that it was capable of giving cells a user manual that would then allow them to make therapeutic proteins. A method that would allow avoiding modification of the genome of cells, modification that would involve the risk of introducing uncontrolled genetic modifications.

But the messenger RNA also had some problems: it caused severe inflammatory reactions, as it was read as an invasion by the immune system.

Together with her research partner, immunologist Dr. Drew Weissman, Katalin Carrico was able to gradually introduce small modifications to the structure of the RNA, making it more acceptable to the immune system.

Their discovery, published in 2005, caused a sensation and (sort of) brought the researcher out of anonymity.

Then they achieve yet another achievement, succeeding in placing their precious RNA in “lipid nanoparticles”, a coating that prevents it from breaking down too quickly and facilitates their entry into cells. The results are published in 2015.

Five years later, at the time of the planet’s battle against the coronavirus, these two achievements found their significance.

The two vaccines that were to save the world were based on this strategy, which consists of introducing genetic instructions into the body to trigger the production of a protein identical to the coronavirus protein, which can trigger an immune response.

Catalin Carrico has now occupied an important position in the German laboratory of BioNTech, which, in collaboration with Pfizer, developed the first vaccine available in the Western world. The other vaccine was developed by the company Moderna…its name stands for “Modified RNA”.

The pioneer biochemist avoids triumphalism, but retains a bitterness in the memory of the moments when she felt unrecognized: a woman, born abroad in a space dominated by men and where, after the end of certain scientific conferences, she was asked: “Where is your supervisor?” ?”

“They always thought, this woman with the foreign accent, she must have someone behind her, someone more intelligent.” Since then, her name was on the list of nominations for the Nobel Prize. As the years passed, her mother became concerned that this had not yet been done.

“I told her: I’m never going to get a federal grant, I’m not somebody, I’m not even a professor!” And to this her mother would reply: “But you work so hard!”