mRNA pioneers sweeping awards but is it too early for the Nobel Prize?

The 2021 Nobel Prize winners will be announced next week, starting with the winners of the Physiology or Medicine prize on Monday 4 October 2021. 

Following the breakthrough success of mRNA vaccines this year there has been a lot of speculation that the prize will go to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, whose work at the University of Pennsylvania on modified mRNA paved the way for the current mRNA based COVID vaccines. The success of mRNA vaccines against COVID has opened up a myriad of other possibilities for using modified mRNA, from treatments for genetic diseases through to cancer immunotherapy.

Kariko and Weissman have already picked up several other of the largest and most prestigious Science prizes this year for their work on mRNA including: the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize awarded by Columbia University for outstanding contribution in basic research in the fields of biology or biochemistry; the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research; the Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award and the Life Sciences Breakthrough Prize. 

However, there are other Scientists in the running and the Nobel committee is not known to award prizes in a hurry (remember it took 8 years for Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier to be rewarded with a Nobel after their landmark 2012 Science paper describing on CRISPR-Cas9).

We will find out next week whether Karikio and Weissman will win this year's Nobel and if it's not this year it seems almost certain that they will be recognised by the committee in years to come. 

In the meantime, we can all be grateful for vaccines and the hard work, determination and perseverance of the scientists who made them possible.  

For our earlier insight on mRNA and what it can be used for, please see https://www.bristows.com/news/spotlight-on-mrna-what-is-mrna-and-what-can-it-be-used-for/