Drew Weissman

He grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, the son of Hal Weissman, who was Jewish, and Adele, who was Italian and never converted, in a house that kept all the Jewish holidays anyway. He finished Lexington High School in 1977 and went to Brandeis, where he took a bachelor's and a master's in biochemistry and enzymology in 1981 working in Gerald Fasman's laboratory. Boston University gave him an MD and a PhD in immunology and microbiology in 1987, under Ann Marshak-Rothstein, for a thesis on the regulation of B lymphocytes. He did his residency at Beth Israel Deaconess and then a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health under Anthony Fauci. In 1997 he moved to the University of Pennsylvania to open a laboratory on RNA and innate immunity.

At Penn he met Katalin Karikó standing at a photocopier, where they commiserated about how little money there was for RNA. She had been trying RNA therapy on strokes and brain disease and turned to vaccines. The obstacle was that synthetic messenger RNA set off inflammation the moment it entered a body. Beginning in 2005 they published the fix — substitute modified nucleosides, pseudouridine for uridine among them, and the immune system stops attacking the molecule. They then worked out how to wrap the mRNA in lipid nanoparticles so the fragile thing survives long enough to arrive, and showed it worked in animals. They founded a small company, RNARx, in 2006. In 2020 that chemistry became the working core of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines against COVID-19.

Nature and Science both turned the 2005 paper down. Immunity took it, and almost nobody noticed. Penn had demoted Karikó in 1995 and never gave her tenure, and in 2013, after the university declined to reinstate her, she left for BioNTech. Their patents on the modified nucleosides came through in 2006 and 2013, and Penn sold the license to Gary Dahl, whose laboratory supply firm became Cellscript. Weeks later Flagship Pioneering, the venture company behind Moderna, telephoned to ask about licensing it, and Karikó had to tell them it was gone. Cellscript licensed it on to Moderna and BioNTech. The chemistry at the center of the two most widely used COVID-19 vaccines had been let go by the university that owned it. Weissman's summary of those years is that they had to fight the entire way.

On October 2, 2023, the Nobel Assembly gave him and Karikó the prize in physiology or medicine, for the nucleoside base modifications. The recognition had arrived in a rush before that — the Rosenstiel in 2020, the Lasker-DeBakey in 2021, then the Breakthrough, Japan, Tang and Robert Koch prizes in 2022, and election to two national academies. He is the first Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research at Penn and directs its Institute for RNA Innovation, working on a pan-coronavirus vaccine, on gene editing to supply missing antibodies, and with Chulalongkorn University in Thailand on getting vaccines to countries that get them last. He hopes the method reaches influenza, herpes and HIV.

Drew Weissman's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Suppression of RNA Recognition by Toll-like Receptors article
  The paper Nature and Science rejected and Immunity published 2005
• Modified-nucleoside mRNA patents patent
  Granted in 2006 and 2013 with Katalin Kariko — Penn licensed them away before either vaccine existed —
• RNARx company
  Co-founded with Kariko to develop RNA therapies 2006
• Lipid nanoparticle delivery for mRNA invention
  The packaging that keeps the molecule intact until it arrives —
• Penn Institute for RNA Innovation company
  He is its founding director —

• 1981 aged ~22 Takes a BA and an MA at Brandeis in biochemistry and enzymology
• 1987 aged ~28 Takes an MD and a PhD at Boston University in immunology and microbiology A residency at Beth Israel Deaconess and an NIH fellowship under Anthony Fauci followed.
• 1997 aged ~38 Moves to Penn and opens a laboratory on RNA and innate immunity He met Katalin Kariko at a photocopier there.
• 2005 aged ~46 Publishes the nucleoside-modification result in Immunity Nature and Science had both rejected it.
• 2006 aged ~47 Co-founds RNARx with Katalin Kariko Penn later sold the license on their patents to a laboratory supply company.
• 2020 aged ~61 The modified mRNA becomes the core of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines
• 2021 aged ~62 Receives the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award
• 2022 aged ~63 Elected to the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences The Breakthrough, Japan, Tang and Robert Koch prizes came the same year.
• October 2, 2023 aged 64 Shares the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Katalin Kariko

• Katalin Karikó b. 1955
  Biochemist whose work on modified messenger RNA enabled highly effective mRNA vaccines and new therapeutic platforms. collaborator
• Anthony Fauci b. 1940
  Physician-scientist who shaped federal responses to HIV/AIDS, emerging infections, and the COVID-19 pandemic. supervised his NIH fellowship
• Jonas Salk 1914–1995
  Medical researcher who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine. earlier American vaccine maker
• Albert Sabin 1906–1993
  Medical researcher who developed the oral polio vaccine used in worldwide eradication campaigns. earlier American vaccine maker
• Maurice Hilleman 1919–2005
  Virologist who developed or improved more than forty vaccines, preventing millions of deaths and transforming public health. predecessor in vaccine development