Princess of Asturias Award 2021 for the creators of Covid-19 vaccines
The Princess of Asturias Awards are prizes awarded by the heir to the Spanish throne. with the purpose of honoring the scientific, technical, cultural, social and human work carried out by people, institutions, groups of people or institutions in the international sphere, although with special attention to the Hispanic sphere.
Each award consists of a diploma, a sculpture by Joan Miró representing the award, a badge with the Prince of Asturias Foundation's coat of arms, and a cash prize of 50,000 euros. If the prize is shared, each recipient will receive a proportional share.
In its 2021 edition, the jury of the Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research wanted to recognize the work of Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman, Philip Felgner, Ugur Sahin, Özlem Türeci, Derrick Rossi and Sarah Gilbert, the scientists who have made it possible for vaccines such as Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca or Moderna to have already allowed millions of people around the world to be immunized.
The jury, meeting via videoconference due to the pandemic, described the award winners, as highlighted in the award citation, as “protagonists of one of the most significant events in the history of science”: “Their work is an excellent example of the importance of basic research for protecting health on a global scale. Their extensive careers have led to innovative applications such as the development, in an extraordinarily short time, of effective vaccines to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. Both the development of the novel messenger RNA technology and the production of adenovirus-based vaccines offer a path of hope for their use against other diseases.”
Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó has been recognized for her work in developing the advances that have enabled the creation of Moderna and BioNTech's messenger RNA-based injections.
American immunologist Drew Weissman is part of Karikó's team, along with Norbert Pardi, from the University of Philadelphia, and was responsible for creating the appropriate envelope for the messenger RNA to reach the muscle cells of the arm and those of the immune system.
Philip Felgner, an infectious disease expert and director of the University of California's Center for Vaccine Research and Development, has evaluated the immune system's response with thousands of blood samples from people who were naturally infected with the coronavirus and determined the strongest response in people immunized with vaccines.
Turkish businessman Uğur Şahin and his German wife Özlem Türeci are the co-founders of BioNTech, the company that, in partnership with the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer, created one of the most effective drugs against Covid-19. This alliance facilitated the fastest vaccine development in history, using a model that allows for production in shorter timeframes, on a global scale, and with unprecedented efficacy in both preventing the disease or its most serious aftereffects, as well as preventing infection.
Canadian biologist Derrick Rossi co-founded Moderna a little over a decade ago. Like BioNTech, he drew on Katalin Kariko's research to develop messenger RNA-based drugs and have the technology ready to tackle the pandemic.
British scientist Sarah Gilbert, a researcher at Oxford for almost three decades, has worked on the development of vaccines that use a viral vector, a modified virus capable of acting as a vehicle to introduce external genetic material into a cell.
The recognition of these seven scientists is a demonstration of how science and technology are joining forces to achieve more comprehensive goals in the face of global problems, such as Covid-19, with a holistic, comprehensive and interdisciplinary vision to solve them.
The awards ceremony, which last year had to be moved from the Campoamor Theater in Oviedo to the Hotel de la Reconquista in the Asturian capital to adapt to a smaller format without an audience due to the pandemic, will be held, as is traditional, in October.
Ramona Ávila Núñez, PhD