2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine: Drew Wiseman, whose research is the foundation of the technology that made it possible Vaccines against Covid-19, He believes that there is still room for improvement, and is working to achieve this Comprehensive immunization against coronavirus.
The American immunologist received the award this year, along with the Hungarian biochemist Catalin Carrico To create technology that allows Use of messenger RNA As a therapeutic agent, which is the prize they will receive with the rest of the winners next Sunday.
This research was crucial to Developing the first vaccines for the epidemic, Saving millions of lives and preventing serious diseases for many others, according to what the Karolinska Institutet, responsible for awarding this Nobel Prize, said when announcing the award.
Weisman (1959) noted that there was still room for improvement mRNA-based vaccines for COVID-19, A virus that mutates in a similar way to influenza, which means we have to do this every year Making new vaccines Since the virus was no longer banned by the previous year.
However, the prize winner is already working, both in his laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (USA) and with an international group, on a vaccine. “pancoronavirus” or global“Who will protect from everyone.”
Such a fortification that “maybe He serves for a term of five years“But we don’t know that yet.” It will prevent any new coronavirus, even those that can be transmitted to humans, coming for example from bats, and any of the current coronavirus variants.
Related news: The Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded to the pioneers of the mRNA vaccine against Covid-19
The vaccine candidate is heading to Clinical trial stage (With People), as there is a project that will start in Thailand, “probably within six or eight months” and is also working on another project, starting “probably within a year”, in collaboration with Duke University (USA).
Research Center Wiseman and Carrico Messenger RNA (mRNA) or messenger ribonucleic acid is a type of transport molecule Genetic information They are needed from one part of the cell to another to make the proteins that allow us to live.
Both scientists, at the time at the University of Pennsylvania, They discovered how to modify RNA molecules. To be used as a therapeutic agent without The human immune system will destroy them They devised a system to encapsulate it in nanoparticles, preventing its rapid degradation.
Although this technology has become during the pandemic The basis for rapid vaccine development, Its potential is very great in various fields of medicine, and Weissman estimates that “major changes will occur in the next ten or twenty years.”
Currently – he said – his team has Seven vaccines are in the first phase of clinical trials To prevent, among others, norovirus (which causes vomiting and diarrhea) or bacteria such as Clostridium difficileWhich causes inflammation in the large intestine without forgetting Global influenza.
In addition, a program has been created Gene therapy for malariawhich he hopes to begin administering within the next two years, among “several treatments in development.”
Weissman had been searching for an HIV vaccine for years, and in fact that was his main goal when he met Carrico by chance in 1997, at a university camera. She was already investigating messenger RNA It will begin a close cooperation lasting more than two decades.
Among the vaccine projects being studied by the Weizmann laboratory There are a “couple” that target HIVWhich “may take between five and seven years” to reach the third (final) phase of clinical trials.
In addition, the program highlighted disease treatmentwhich is already being tested in macaque models and “within six months we will know whether it works or not,” and if so the next step will be testing with patients.
The mRNA receptor is very promising, but at the beginning of research its potential was limited. Little interest from other scholars. However, today’s new Nobel Prize winners have always been clear.
Twenty-five years ago, Katie and I would list everything messenger RNA could do, but we would joke that we would probably die before it left its mark on the world. But we have survived so far
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With information from EFE
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