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Who is Drew Weissman, the 2023 Nobel Prize winner from Penn?

Drew Weissman is one of two University of Pennsylvania scientists sharing the Nobel Prize in medicine for their discoveries about messenger RNA.

University of Pennsylvania professor Drew Weissman is a recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work with Katalin Karikó, an adjunct professor of neurosurgery, on messenger RNA used to rapidly develop lifesaving vaccines amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
University of Pennsylvania professor Drew Weissman is a recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work with Katalin Karikó, an adjunct professor of neurosurgery, on messenger RNA used to rapidly develop lifesaving vaccines amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.Read morePeggy Peterson Photography, courtesy Penn Medicine

Drew Weissman is one of two University of Pennsylvania scientists who on Monday shared the Nobel Prize in medicine for their discoveries about messenger RNA, the genetic foundation of the COVID-19 vaccine.

» READ MORE: Penn mRNA scientists Karikó and Weissman win Nobel Prize

Weissman is a professor of vaccine research at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and director of Penn’s Institute for RNA Innovation.

Weissman and Katalin Karikó met by chance while photocopying research papers in the late 1990s. Together, they discovered how to modify mRNA to instruct cells to build proteins and activate the immune system against a virus.

The technique became widely known as the basis for the COVID-19 vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech but holds promise for many other medical uses.

They won the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences in 2021 for their work on mRNA, and were named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in January.

Trained under Fauci, then came to Penn

Weissman earned an undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in immunology at Boston University.

He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, under former infectious-disease chief Anthony Fauci, before coming to Penn in 1997.

Weissman was born in Lexington, Mass. where he developed a love for science at a young age.

His mother, a dental hygienist, and his father, an engineer, encouraged him to explore the inner workings of everything from toasters to doorknobs.

“They were always getting me to put stuff back together,” he once told The Inquirer.

» READ MORE: Who is Penn Nobel prize winner Katalin Karikó?