A biochemist born in Hungary and an American immunologist have won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for research that led to the development of the two most important COVID-19 vaccines.
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman met at copy machine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and collaborated for decades to try to find ways to use genetic material called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to make vaccines.
The scientists discovered that modifying a chemical building block of mRNA kept the immune system from destroying the material and enabled it to instead stimulate protection against viruses. They published a seminal paper describing their work in 2005.