'Anti-vaxxers existed before, but never led governments'

A new wave of anti-vaxxers around the world means that children may soon start dying of measles, polio, and other diseases that we thought were behind us, Dr Drew Weissman, the 2023 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, told Rhythma Kaul in an interview.

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The head of the Weissman Lab at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr Weissman and his then colleague Katalin Kariko discovered a foundational tweak to RNA, which became the basis for successful mRNA platform -- a breakthrough that paved the way for the first Covid-19 vaccine in 2020. While speaking about his work and the future of research at a time when the US is pulling out as a major funder, he lamented that though there were always anti-vaccine people around, they weren't leading governments until now. Edited excerpts:

How hopeful were you of achieving the kind of results you managed when you started work on RNA biology?

We spent 25 years without funding, because we knew that someday it would be a useful vaccine and therapeutic. We were confident it would be useful if we could work out all of the problems.

Please explain your research, and how was it to see your research resulting in Pfizer and Moderna's anti-Covid vaccines?

About 10 years ago, when we started doing clinical trials, we knew modified RNA was headed in the right direction. But when Covid hit, it was great to see RNA coming to the rescue.

At a basic level, people need to understand RNA is kind of a middleman; our DNA has the codes for every protein that allows our cells and our bodies to live. The way a body makes a protein is it takes an mRNA that makes a copy of one of those codes in the DNA and then it shuttles that code into the outside of the cell where a machine called the ribosome reads the code and makes the protein. When you give a vaccine, you give the code for the spike protein of Corona virus or any other vaccine antigen, and then the cell makes the protein.

What are your ongoing projects?