In A Sublime Echo Of The First Nobel Ever Awarded, Katalin Karikó And Drew Weissman Win For mRNA Work -- Virology, Like Emil A. Von Behring In 1901...

The woman at right so richly deserves this. She was often told that her work (in central Europe two decades ago, and even after) would be a dead end. . . or "less than important", at least.

Now it is no exaggeration at all. . . to say she has saved well over 20 million lives globally in the past decade alone. And in fitting fashion, she harkens back to the first Nobel in medicine (1901), to the man whose name would grace what became Dade-Behring. . . in virology (but like him, that company is now long gone as well).

Here's Nature, with much more on her story (and an older backgrounder of mine on the topic):

. . .This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to biochemist Katalin Karikó and immunologist Drew Weissman for discoveries that enabled the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

The vaccines have been administered more than 13 billion times, saved millions of lives and prevented millions of cases of severe COVID-19, said the Nobel committee.

Karikó, who is at Szeged University in Hungary, and Weissman, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (UPenn), paved the way for the vaccines’ development by finding a way to deliver genetic material called messenger RNA into cells without triggering an unwanted immune response.

They will each receive an equal share of the prize, which totals 11 million Swedish krona (US$1 million). . . .

Excellent. Just. . . excellent. Onward -- be excellent, to one another.

नमस्ते