The Albany Medical Center Prize for 2021 was awarded to Karikó, Weissman, and colleagues for discoveries enabling COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.
On November 15, 2021, the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research for 2021 was formally awarded to Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman, and their colleagues, recognizing the discoveries that made possible the rapid development of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines.
The Albany Prize is among the largest monetary science awards in the United States and has a strong track record of anticipating future Nobel Prize laureates. Its presentation to Karikó reflected the scientific community's growing recognition of her decades-long contributions to RNA biochemistry.
The award ceremony highlighted how Karikó's research, once relegated to the margins of academic funding priorities, had become central to a technology platform capable of responding to a global public health emergency with unprecedented speed, fundamentally reshaping vaccine science and pandemic preparedness.
This recognition, occurring alongside several other major 2021 awards, cemented Karikó's status as one of the most important biomedical scientists of her era, whose persistence through years of professional adversity ultimately yielded a technology with profound humanitarian impact.