By Tsering Dhundup
DHARAMSHALA, Oct 5: His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Tuesday wrote to Drew Weissman and Katalin Kariko to offer his congratulations for winning the Nobel Prize for medicine.
The Nobel Laureate wrote, “The path-breaking technology that the two of you developed led to the production of the mRNA Covid vaccines. Your work set an example of how scientific research can make a real contribution to the well-being of humanity at large. Your research, begun before the Covid pandemic occurred, saved a vast number of lives throughout the world. I applaud your achievement and the way you have made your lives meaningful through dedicated service for the benefit of others”.
“Today, we are reminded daily how deeply interconnected our world has become and the vitally important role the scientific community can play in making it a better, safer place for us all”.
Drew Weissman and Katalin Kariko received Nobel prizes for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
The discoveries by the two Nobel Laureates were critical for developing effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic that began in early 2020. Through their findings, which have fundamentally changed the understanding of how mRNA interacts with the immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to collective human health in modern times.
Katalin Karikó was born in 1955 in Szolnok, Hungary. She received her PhD from Szeged’s University in 1982 and performed postdoctoral research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged until 1985. She then conducted postdoctoral research at Temple University, Philadelphia, and the University of Health Science, Bethesda. In 1989, she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she remained until 2013. After that, she became vice president and later senior vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals. Since 2021, she has been a Professor at Szeged University and an Adjunct Professor at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Drew Weissman was born in 1959 in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA. He received his MD, and PhD degrees from Boston University in 1987. He did his clinical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School and postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health. In 1997, Weissman established his research group at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research and Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations.
