On the 2nd of October 2023, the Royal Swedish Science Academy has announced that, based on the decision of the Karolinska Institute’s Nobel General Assembly, this year’s shared Nobel Prize was awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications. These discoveries were proven to be key achivements to the development of the mRNA vaccine, widely used against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Katalin Karikó obtained her doctoral degree in biochemistry at the University of Szeged, Hungary, where she conducted her first post-doctoral researches, later continuing them in the United States, at the Temple University and at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Since 2013, she’s been the vice president, and later the leading vice president of BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals. Currently she’s a professor at the University of Szeged, and an assistant professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
