Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman will receive this year's Lasker Prize for Clinical Development, the New York-based Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced on Friday.
According to the award on the foundation's website, Katalin Karikó, vice president of German BioNTech, and Drew Weissman, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, were awarded the recognition for the discovery of a therapeutic process based on modified mRNA technology, which enabled the rapid development of highly effective Covid-19 vaccines. In addition to the fact that technology provides a means to suppress the devastating epidemic, the innovation is a step forward towards the treatment and prevention of various diseases, they wrote.
The Lasker Award was established in 1942 by Albert Lasker and his wife, Mary Woodard Lasker. The recognition was awarded for the first time in 1946. This year, it was awarded in three categories, in addition to clinical developments, for basic medical research as well as special medical achievements.
the announcement of the University of Szeged, which reports on the recognition, the Lasker Prize has already been awarded to Nobel laureates Albert Szent-Györgyi (1954), Andrew Schally (1975) and, in 2021, Katalin Karikó. Since the award was founded, 95 Lasker laureates have also received the Nobel Prize.
Source: MTI
