Science

Scientists behind mRNA Covid-19 vaccines win Nobel prize

Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman’s technology enabled Moderna and Pfizer to swiftly develop shots

Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman: Pair will share the 11 million-krona (€949,210) award. Picture: Bloomberg

Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine for research that laid the groundwork for some of the best-selling medicines of all time: the messenger-RNA vaccines against Covid-19.

Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman’s work helped pioneer the technology that enabled Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership to swiftly develop shots. The vaccines have been given to hundreds of millions of people around the world, a key step toward easing the coronavirus pandemic.

Kariko and Weissman will ...