Discovery Starts Here! On October 2, 2023, The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Katalin Karikó, Ph.D., an adjunct professor of Neurosurgery at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Drew Weissman, MD, Ph.D., the Roberts Family Professor of Vaccine Research at the Perelman School of Medicine, recognizing their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. You can read the official announcement here.

In its announcement, Chamber member Penn Medicine said: “The University of Pennsylvania messenger RNA pioneers whose years of scientific partnership unlocked understanding of how to modify mRNA to make it an effective therapeutic – enabling a platform used to rapidly develop lifesaving vaccines amid the global COVID-19 pandemic – have been named winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They become the 28th and 29th Nobel laureates affiliated with Penn and join nine previous Nobel laureates with ties to the University of Pennsylvania who have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine.” Read more from Penn here.

The Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia expresses our heartiest congratulations to Dr. Karikó, Dr. Weissman, and the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine on this milestone achievement and thank them for everything they do to advance discovery in our region.

To learn more about the people behind Greater Philadelphia’s life sciences discoveries, check out our “Discovery Starts with Me” series here.