2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. The prize was announced by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm on 2 October 2023.

The citation

The citation reads: "for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19". They share the prize equally.

The laureates

Katalin Karikó was born in 1955 in Szolnok, Hungary, and is affiliated with Szeged University, Szeged and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Drew Weissman was born in 1959 in Lexington, the United States, and is affiliated with Penn Institute for RNA Innovations, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Why it matters

Karikó and Weissman found how to change mRNA so that it does not trigger harmful inflammation, making possible the mRNA vaccines against Covid-19.

The prize

The prize is worth 11 million Swedish kronor, divided between the laureates. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.