Nobel Prize goes to scientists behind mRNA Covid vaccines

Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman developed the technology which led to Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines.

scytale 37 points 3 years ago

As they should. Not only for covid, but the development of mRNA vaccines in general opens the gate for more effective vaccines in the future.

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charliespider 9 points 3 years ago

It's an absolute game changer.

People tried to compare the COVID vaccine development time to previous vaccines without understanding the difference in how the mRNA vaccines are made. You essentially just need to sequence the virus's genome (which is miraculously easy to do these days because of other amazing people's incredible efforts), then target a protein from the virus's exterior and use that snippet in the mRNA vaccine. This radically reduces the time it takes to develop a vaccine as well as increase it's effectiveness because of the control you have over the vaccine's selected target.

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CareHare 2 points 3 years ago

Does CRISPR help the development of the vaccines in any way?

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charliespider 4 points 3 years ago

My understanding is that that's what's used to extract the targeted protein marker from the virus genome, so not only does it help, it's a key component in developing an mRNA vaccine.

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bloopernova 28 points 3 years ago

As well it should. They saved a lot of lives.

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TheMightyCanuck 25 points 3 years ago

Antivaxers are gonna blow their lid If they ever end up reading about it.

Thankfully they don't read much

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kmartburrito 12 points 3 years ago

Thankfully they don't read much good

There, fixed that for you

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awwwyissss 6 points 3 years ago

If it's not a YouTube video they'll never even know

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randombullet 0 points 3 years ago

Is this a YouTube advertisement??

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NielsBohron 19 points 3 years ago

This is by far the fastest turn-around I've ever seen between the actual research and winning the Nobel. The internet has changed the rate of recognition to some extent, but this is a bonkers time-frame compared to most. The first time Kariko pubished on this, it was only in 2005 and it was a highly tentative idea at the time, and they didn't have much in the way of positive results until 2010. I mean, for context, the guy who came up with the idea of "frontier orbitals" and their importance (aka HOMO/LUMO) had to wait 30 years, and that work was hugely important in organic chemistry (and has applications in numerous other fields like semiconductors and nanotechnology). Hell, I can't think of a single time when the research was conducted less than 20 years before winning the Nobel (at least in physics and chemistry; physiology is not my field, so maybe things move faster over there).

That said, Kariko and Weissman absolutely deserve the award and I'm happy that people were so quick to recognize the impact of their research (even if did take a global pandemic to bring it to the attention of the average citizen).

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hordenduopol 18 points 3 years ago

Well deserved, I hope we will see more vaccines based on their research soon.

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PostaL 8 points 3 years ago

If antivaxxers could read, they'd be very upset

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