Title
Honoring and recognizing Katalin Karik?, PhD and Drew Weissman, MD PhD for winning the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Body
WHEREAS, Dr. Katalin Karik? is a senior vice president at BioNTech and an adjunct professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Karik? received her bachelor's degree in biology in 1978 and her doctorate in biochemistry in 1982 from the University of Szeged in her native Hungary. She was working at the Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged before immigrating to the United States in 1985; and
WHEREAS, Dr. Drew Weissman is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. Before joining Penn in 1997, Dr. Weissman was a fellow at the National Institutes of Health studying HIV in the lab of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Weissman received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from Brandeis University. Dr. Weissman earned his MD and PhD from Boston University and completed his residency at Beth Israel Hospital; and
WHEREAS, After a chance meeting in the late 1990s, while photocopying research papers, Dr. Karik? and Dr. Weissman began investigating mRNA as a potential therapeutic. In 2005, they published a key discovery: mRNA could be altered and delivered effectively into the body to activate the body's protective immune system; and
WHEREAS, mRNA-based vaccines elicited a robust immune response, including high levels of antibodies that attack a specific infectious disease that has not previously been encountered. Unlike other vaccines, a live or attenuated virus is not injected or required at any point; and
WHEREAS, When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the true value of the pair's lab work was revealed in the timeliest of ways, as companies worked to quickly develop and deploy vaccines to protect people from the virus; and
WHEREAS, Both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna utilized Dr. Karik? and Dr. We...
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