Professor Katalin Kariko awarded the 2022 NOVO NORDISK Prize#
Academia Europaea congratulates Professor Katalin Kariko, member of the Biochemistry and Molecular biology section of Academia Europaea, to the award of the 2022 NOVO NORDISK Prize.
Prof. Kariko (together with Özlem Türeci, Drew Weissman and Uğur Şahin) are awarded the prize for their pioneering scientific discoveries that have led to the launch of the first COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.
Read the interview
with the awardees from the day of the Prize ceremony where they tell both the personal and scientific stories behind the vaccine:
"When the world was locked down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a miracle was needed to reopen it. Vaccine researchers around the world dropped what they were doing to join the collective race against the new virus. The first to reach the finish line was considered a real outsider: the mRNA vaccine. However, many people do not know that the work on mRNA as a new drug class started decades ago. Now the four recipients of the 2022 Novo Nordisk Prize tell the story behind the development: the failures, the persistence and the distrust in the technology they are now certain will also revolutionise the approach to treating many otherwise severe diseases."
You can also watch the interview on VIMEO interview.
