The Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Cyprus, Leontios Kostrikis, spoke to Mesimeri and Kati about the awarding of Katalin Carrico and Drew Weisman with the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work on RNA technology.
He explained that the bases for the development of the Pfizer/BionTech and Moderna vaccines against it Covid-19 they had been in since 2005, "the work they were awarded was 20 years old", responding to criticism that "science made the vaccine in a few years or a few months". He explained that “the Covid vaccine was a simple application of the science that was known. The mRNA vaccine is only the tip of the iceberg. We will see many vaccines for infectious diseases as well as therapeutic vaccines for non-viral diseases such as cancer."
He emphasized that the importance of the Nobel Prize is "the discovery that makes the world think in a different way." He continued by emphasizing that "its most important application and we will see it in the coming years is the treatment for cancer. In a person who is diagnosed with cancer, a blood test will be done, the cancer cells will be isolated, the cells will be genetically analyzed, allowing scientists to find the proteins found in the cancer cells. Then information will be sent to centers and a specialized vaccine will be manufactured for the particular cancer in the particular person." That is, it will be done from chemotherapy to immunotherapy.
He noted that he expects these developments in medicine very soon.
Source: Sigmalive