The Nobel Prize in Medicine was given for the development of vaccines against COVID-19

Traditionally, the press and Internet resources specializing in science make predictions about who will become the winner of the most prestigious award. Among the likely winners, in particular, was the name of Katalin Kariko, a Hungarian and American biochemist specializing in RNA-mediated mechanisms. And then the authors of the forecasts got it right.

She is a 68-year-old daughter of a butcher and an accountant from Kishuyszallas, Hungary, whose research has focused on the development of in vitro transcribed mRNA for protein therapy, her specialties include messenger RNA gene therapy, RNA-induced immune responses, the molecular basis of ischemic tolerance and the treatment of cerebral ischemia.

The second Nobel Prize winner was American physician-scientist Drew Weissman, a biochemist best known for his contributions to RNA research. His work has helped develop effective mRNA vaccines, most notably the COVID-19 vaccine from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna.

Along with Katalin Kariko, Drew Weissman has received numerous awards, including the 2021 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.

Kariko and Weissman contributed to the unprecedented pace of vaccine development

The discoveries of two Nobel Prize winners were critical to the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic that began in early 2020. With their groundbreaking discoveries that revolutionized our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the honorees contributed to an unprecedented pace of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health of our time.

Also in the forecasts was the name of the American scientist, member of the US National Academy of Sciences, winner of many prestigious awards, Arthur Horwich, whose works are mainly devoted to cytology – that is, the branch of biology that studies living cells, their organelles, their structure, functioning, processes of division, aging and of death.

The candidacy of the former Soviet and now American biochemist Alexander Yakovlevich Varshavsky, who moved to the West from the USSR back in the late 1970s, was also discussed in the forecasts. His scientific works are devoted to the role of ubiquitin in the cell cycle, apoptosis, malignancy, inflammation and the immune response. Varshavsky is also known as the author of a fundamental method of targeted destruction of cancer cells through homozygous DNA deletions.

Another candidate discussed in the forecasts was the German scientist, winner of many prestigious awards, Franz-Ulrich Hartl, whose works are mainly devoted to biochemistry and cytology. Since 1997, Director of the Department of Cellular Biochemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. In 2003-2005 – President of the Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Last year, the winner was Swedish biologist and evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominids and human evolution.” It is curious that forty years earlier, his father Sune Bergström, who became famous for his study of prostaglandins, hormone-like substances that control a number of important processes in the body, received the Nobel Prize in the same field. In the 1950s, Sunebergström succeeded in obtaining pure prostaglandins and determining the chemical structure of two important examples, PGE and PGF. He also showed that they are formed as a result of the conversion of unsaturated fatty acids. Prostaglandins are used as drugs; for example, to induce contractions during childbirth, induce abortions, or reduce the risk of developing stomach ulcers during treatment with other pharmaceutical drugs.

As of last year, only twelve women had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (Barbara McClintock was the only one who won the prize alone in 1983, without sharing it with other laureates). The last time a Chinese woman, Tu Youyou, won a Nobel Prize in this field was awarded in 2015 “for her discoveries concerning a new method of treating malaria.”

“The Nobel Prize is usually awarded to people who made discoveries 20, 30, 40 years ago. In the ’80s and ’90s, there weren’t many women in leadership positions at universities at the time,” explains David Pendlebury, a senior analyst at the Institute for Scientific Information at research firm Clarivate, who makes Nobel-winning predictions based on how often scientists cite key articles of certain researchers.

The fact that none of last year’s medicine and physiology laureates were women was, to some critics, further evidence of systemic bias in science, even as more and more women participate in scientific research.

But this year, with the awarding of Kariko, this “shortcoming” was corrected.

Laureates in medicine and physiology are determined by the Nobel Assembly of Karolinska University (Stockholm), consisting of fifty professors. Each year, the Nobel Committee sends out a request for nominations to the wider scientific community. The Karolinska University Assembly is seeking nominations for 1 to 3 people who have made an important discovery in physiology or medicine (no self-nomination is allowed – that is, no scientist can nominate himself, but members of scientific societies, deans of medical schools, Nobel laureates and other scientists who have received a request from the assembly may nominate a candidate for the award).

Nobel Prize nominations have been kept secret for 50 years. After declassification, interesting facts are discovered. Thus, the Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine as many as 32 times, but was never awarded. In 1929, the Nobel Committee for Medicine brought in an expert who concluded that further study of Freud was unnecessary because Freud’s work had no proven scientific value. Freud was also once nominated for the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature by Nobel laureate Romain Rolland, an acquaintance of Freud.

Under rules established in 1895 by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the selection committee’s task is made more difficult by the fact that the prize can be awarded to no more than three people, while the collaborative nature of much scientific research must be taken into account.

During the period from 1901 to 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded 113 times – and in about a third of cases the award was awarded to only one laureate (this happened 40 times – including last year). And approximately a third each occurred in cases where two (34 times) and three (39 times) scientists were awarded. In total, the medical Nobel was awarded to 225 scientists over 120 years.

Frederick Banting is still considered the youngest laureate in the field of medicine, who was only 32 years old when he was awarded the prize in 1932 for the discovery of insulin. And the oldest Nobel laureate in the history of this nomination remains the American scientist Peyton Rose, who became a laureate at the age of 87 in 1966 for the discovery of oncogenic viruses. The average age of those awarded is 58 years.