BIAL Award in Biomedicine 2021 Ceremony

The Winner

A research work on mRNA technology, which is used in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to prevent COVID-19, won the second edition of the BIAL Award in Biomedicine. The winning team was led by American scientist Drew Weissman.

Two authors that won the BIAL Award in Biomedicine 2021, Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó, were subsequently honoured with the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Winning Paper: “Zika virus protection by a single low-dose nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccination”

Authors | Corresponding authors*:  Norbert Pardi, Michael J. Hogan, Rebecca S. Pelc, Hiromi Muramatsu, Hanne Andersen, Christina R. DeMaso, Kimberly A. Dowd, Laura L. Sutherland, Richard M. Scearce, Robert Parks, Wendeline Wagner, Alex Granados, Jack Greenhouse, Michelle Walker, Elinor Willis, Jae-Sung Yu, Charles E. McGee, Gregory D. Sempowski, Barbara L. Mui, Ying K. Tam, Yan-Jang Huang, Dana Vanlandingham, Veronica M. Holmes, Harikrishnan Balachandran, Sujata Sahu, Michelle Lifton, Stephen Higgs, Scott E. Hensley, Thomas D. Madden, Michael J. Hope, Katalin Karikó, Sampa Santra, Barney S. Graham, Mark G. Lewis, Theodore C. Pierson, Barton F. Haynes & Drew Weissman*

Published: Nature, Volume 543, P248–251, February, 2017.