Thomas Perlmann, secretary of the Nobel Assembly, right, announces the winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, seen on screen, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Monday Oct. 2, 2023. The Nobel Prize in medicine has been awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
Karikó said her husband was the first to pick up the early morning call, then handed it to her to hear the news. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I was very much surprised. But I am very happy.” Dr. Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia, described the mRNA vaccines as a “game changer” in helping to shut down the coronavirus pandemic, crediting the shots with saving millions of lives.
Karikó was a senior vice president at BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to make one of the COVID-19 vaccines. The BioNtech website says that since 2022 she has been an external consultant. She is the 13th woman to win the Nobel Prize in medicine. Weissman is a professor and director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovations at the University of Pennsylvania.