Two scientists who began experimenting with messenger ribonucleic acid (RNA) 15 years before the COVID pandemic broke out have won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Winners, Hungarian-born Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman, work at the University of Pennsylvania.

Zeroing in on changing a chemical building block of the genetic material of mRNA, the two discovered how to eliminate an inflammatory barrier that was preventing the gene therapy from being useful for a vaccine, and were able to produce a COVID jab within a year.

According to NPR, more than 13 billion doses of it have been administered around the world so far.

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NPR October 2, 2023