2023-10-08 06:00:25
Laboratory flasks used to explain quantum dots during the announcement of the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, October 4, 2023. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND / AFP
Nobel week begins each year with three scientific prizes which reward decisive innovations in medicine, physics and chemistry. This cutting-edge research, often complex to understand, is decisive for the advancement of certain present or future technologies or uses.
Nobel Prize in Medicine: making messenger RNA vaccines possible
The Hungarian Katalin Kariko and the American Drew Weissman received, Monday October 2, the prize for their work on messenger RNA at the origin of the first vaccines using this technology, developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, very effective against Covid-19.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers The Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for their contribution to the messenger RNA vaccine
Basic concepts
L’messenger ribonucleic acid (messenger RNA) is used by each of our cells to transmit information. Genetic information, our DNA, remains in the nucleus of cells. To produce proteins coded by our genes, our body will “copy” part of the DNA into the form of a strand of RNA containing the same genetic information. Chemically, a strand of RNA is a series of four types of molecules: adenine, uracil, cytosine or guanine. It can travel out of the cell nucleus and be translated into protein. The discovery of the concept of messenger RNA was rewarded with a Nobel Prize in 1965.
THE vaccines work by preparing the body to recognize and eliminate a pathogenic microbe: this can be done from a weakened or inactivated virus, viral vectors (another harmless virus modified to resemble the target virus), proteins characteristic of the virus to process or genetic material (DNA or RNA) allowing our body to produce these proteins. In all cases, the aim is to bring the patient’s body into contact with characteristic elements of the virus, so that it develops the antibodies necessary in the event of a future infection.
Reread the decryption of 2020: How do potential vaccines against Covid-19 work?
Innovation rewarded
To hope to develop vaccines with messenger RNA, the molecule had to survive the injection of the vaccine and manage to be translated into proteins.
Other researchers had shown that surrounding messenger RNA with a fat capsule allowed the RNA to penetrate cells efficiently. But RNA produced in the laboratory was immediately destroyed by the immune system. Tests on mice showed that activation of white blood cells caused inflammation. However, we did not observe the same inflammation with RNA from mammals.
Researchers Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman attempted numerous chemical modifications. They observed that one of the four molecules that make up RNA, uracil, had to be replaced by another molecule, pseudouridine. The immune system then does not detect the RNA contained in the vaccine and the messenger can penetrate the cells to allow the production of proteins characteristic of the virus.
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