Understanding among a broad public when mRNA vaccines are awarded
A Nobel Prize with understanding among the general public. This year, the discoveries behind the effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 are awarded. The research spared the world from millions of deaths during the pandemic. At the same time, vaccine resources are unequally distributed.
"This is an award quite easy to accept, many people know what it’s about. That mRNA would one day get a prize was really obvious but it often takes longer than this, says Magnus Gisslén", Professor of infectious diseases at Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, and State Epidemiologist in Sweden.
Both he and his colleague Ali Harandi, Associate Professor of clinical immunology at Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, highlight the fact that the mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives during the pandemic, and meant that fewer people needed hospital care. In total, over 13 billion doses of mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 have been given to people worldwide.
"mRNA vaccine technology is versatile and fast, and as such suit response to pandemics and epidemics. mRNA vaccine is currently being investigated for a number of other diseases, ranging from RSV, influenza to herpes simplex virus and parasitic infections as well as cancer", he says.
Research long before the pandemic
The Nobel Assembly has decided to award the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman. She is born in Hungary 1955 and affiliated to Szeged University, Hungary, and University of Pennsylvania, US. He is born in US 1959 and affiliated to University of Pennsylvania.
They are awarded for their discoveries concerning so called nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Through their groundbreaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, Karikó and Weissman have contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times.
Ali Harandi emphasizes that hundreds of scientists worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the covid-19 pandemic. In 1987 Robert Malone was the first who showed that mRNA in in fatty droplet can induce protein expression in cells, followed by several other discoveries. The crucial findings from this year's award winners were published in 2005, fifteen years before the pandemic.
Unequal access to mRNA vaccines
"We were very lucky", says Magnus Gisslén, "that the technology had come this far and was actually ready to be developed into the vaccinations that we benefited so much from during the pandemic. If the pandemic had come five years earlier, we would have had a completely different situation".
Ali Harandi is active internationally within, among other things, the European Vaccine Initiative, which supports and accelerates the development of effective and affordable vaccines for global health. He states that there is great inequality in the availability of mRNA vaccines.
"mRNA vaccine is expensive for under-developed countries, and the pandemics showed inequality in distribution of mRNA vaccines in under-served countries. some initiatives are underway to transfer the technology to Africa with a couple of manufacturing sites being developed", he says.