Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman won the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday for work on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that paved the way for groundbreaking Covid-19 vaccines.
The pair, who had been tipped as favourites, "contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times," the jury said.
The mRNA vaccines were approved for use in December 2020, and together with other Covid vaccines "have saved millions of lives and prevented severe disease in many more," the jury said.
Kariko, 68, and Weissman, 64, longstanding colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, have won a slew of awards for their research, including the prestigious Lasker Award in 2021, often seen as a precursor to the Nobel.
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