A life in context
The person behind the prize
Weissman trained as a physician and researcher at Boston University, then worked in clinical medicine and at the US National Institutes of Health. He established his laboratory at Pennsylvania in 1997. His interest in immune cells complemented Karikó’s expertise in RNA chemistry.
The contribution
He and Karikó investigated why immune cells reacted strongly to laboratory-made mRNA. Their work identified chemical modifications that made the message more usable, providing an essential foundation for later mRNA vaccines.
The idea in plain language
Messenger RNA is a temporary working copy of genetic instructions. Cells read it to make proteins. Early attempts to use laboratory-made mRNA ran into a problem: immune cells reacted strongly to the message itself.
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