The World Health Organization proclaimed the termination of COVID-19 a global health emergency in May 2023. Over the course of three years, the epidemic took the lives of more than 6.9 million people.
Vaccines against the virus were developed at an unparalleled rate. More than 13.5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccinations have been provided as of this writing, with more than 70% of the global population receiving at least one dose.
The Nobel Prize in Medicine has been granted to two scientists whose research led to the development of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. They are the first laureates to be named this year.
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
Katalin Kariko, a Hungarian scientist, and Drew Weissman, a US colleague, met in the photocopier line in 1998 and went on to collaborate.
They surmounted a significant barrier in the usage of messenger RNA (mRNA) technology in 2005, developing “nucleoside base modifications” that prevent the immune system from starting an inflammatory attack on lab-made mRNA.
“We couldn’t get people to notice RNA as something interesting,” Weissman stated. “Pretty much everybody gave up on it.”
Kariko is a former senior vice president and head of RNA protein replacement at BioNTech, a German biotech firm that collaborated with Pfizer to create an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
“The laureates contributed to an unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute medical university stated.
Nobel Prize for Physics
Thanks to the work of three Nobel Laureates in Physics, it may be feasible to identify disease traces more quickly in the future.
Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier actually shed light on the flow of electrons within atoms and molecules, which was previously thought to be impossible.
The trio developed ultra-short laser pulses that can capture changes within atoms, providing a tool that could aid in the detection of disease components in blood samples.
“The ability to generate attosecond pulses of light has opened the door on a tiny, extremely tiny time scale, and it’s also opened the door to the world of electrons,” said Eva Olsson, chairwoman of the Nobel Prize in Physics Selection Committee.
Nobel Prize for Chemistry
Three Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 2023 are also acknowledged for pioneering work on a minuscule scale – in nanotechnology – generating particles so small that quantum phenomena dictate their behavior.
Alexei Ekimov demonstrated size-dependent quantum effects in colored glass using copper chloride nanoparticles in the 1980s. Louis Brus later demonstrated this in fluid-suspended particles, while Moungi Bawendi refined quantum dot synthesis for practical usage in 1993.
Quantum dots, which are luminous nanoparticles formed of semiconducting materials, are currently employed in everything from computer monitors and television screens to LED lighting and the most advanced techniques for mapping biological tissue.
“In terms of size, it has the same relationship to a football as a football has to Earth,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted in a recent X (previously Twitter) post.