The Lasker Foundation presented Karikó, Weissman, and colleagues the 2021 Lasker-DeBakey Award for mRNA vaccine development.
On September 24, 2021, the Lasker Foundation presented Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman, and their co-laureates with the 2021 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, one of the most prestigious honors in American medicine, often referred to as the 'American Nobel.'
The award recognized their fundamental discoveries enabling the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, technology that had, within less than a year of its emergency authorization, been administered to hundreds of millions of people worldwide, dramatically reducing severe disease and death from the pandemic.
This honor came after decades in which Karikó's research on modified mRNA had been repeatedly rejected for funding and dismissed by peer reviewers who doubted the therapeutic viability of synthetic RNA. Her persistence in the face of professional setbacks, including a demotion at the University of Pennsylvania, made this recognition especially significant.
The Lasker Award has historically been a strong predictor of future Nobel Prize recognition, and Karikó's receipt of it in 2021 foreshadowed her Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine two years later, cementing her transformation from an overlooked researcher into one of the most celebrated scientists of her generation.