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Karikó & Weissman Lipid Research
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine for 2023, made significant contributions to the development of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for mRNA delivery. Their work focused on nucleoside base modifications, which enabled the creation of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.

Key Findings
Ionizable Lipid Nanoparticles: Karikó and Weissman developed ionizable lipid nanoparticles (iLNPs) that can deliver mRNA to specific organs, including the placenta during pregnancy. This breakthrough has potential applications in therapeutic base editing of congenital brain diseases (Lu et al., 2023) and in vivo mRNA delivery to the placenta (Kelsey et al., 2023).
Pentaerythritol-Based One-Component Ionizable Amphiphilic Janus Dendrimers: Their research introduced a novel class of iLNPs, featuring pentaerythritol-based Janus dendrimers. These nanoparticles demonstrated targeted and equally distributed delivery of mRNA to organs (Lu et al., 2023).
Impact on mRNA Vaccine Development
Karikó and Weissman’s discoveries paved the way for the rapid development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. Their work on nucleoside base modifications and lipid nanoparticles enabled the creation of stable and efficient mRNA formulations, which were crucial for the success of mRNA-based vaccines.

https://axial.acs.org/medicinal-chemistry/the-2023-nobel-prize-in-physiology-or-medicine-goes-to-katalin-kariko-and-drew-weissman