The world owes a great debt of gratitude to the scientists who won the Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday for groundbreaking research that paved the way for vaccines against Covid-19. Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman spent decades developing messenger RNA (mRNA) technology that made possible life-saving vaccines such as those produced by drug giants Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.

Unlike traditional vaccines using weakened viruses or parts of a virus protein, mRNA jabs use messenger RNA molecules to teach the body to generate specialised proteins and activate immune cells to target viruses. Colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, the pair were praised by the Nobel jury for contributing to the “unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times”.

Who is Katalin Kariko, pioneering scientist and 2023 Nobel winner?

Although 68-year-old Kariko has been honoured several times for her work, she struggled in her early career to convince others to support her research. The Hungarian-born biochemist put her perseverance down to her migrant background. While in Hong Kong in August to receive an honorary doctorate of science from Chinese University, Kariko thanked those “who tried to make my life miserable, because they made me stronger … and resilient”. A shining light for female scientists, Kariko is the 13th woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in its 122-year history. The last was Tu Youyou, who in 2015 became the first Chinese woman to be honoured for her work on an anti-malarial drug.