The arrival of COVID-19 vaccines around the world in 2021 was a key turning point in a pandemic that had begun more than a year prior. And the groundbreaking joint research of Katalin Karikó, Ph.D., and Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D., played a major role in reaching that milestone.
It’s for their foundational work that enabled the use of messenger RNA (mRNA) in vaccine development that they’re receiving the 2021 Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research, which was established in 2004 to honor the innovative namesake of what is now called the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.