• HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Saturday, May 21, 2022
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
    • BIOENGINEERING
    • SCIENCE NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • FORUM
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News

BIAL Award in Biomedicine distinguishes research which is the basis of two of the vaccines against covid-19

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
February 18, 2022
in Science News
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

A team led by American scientist Drew Weissman won the second edition of the BIAL Award in Biomedicine with a work focused on mRNA technology, which is now used in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to prevent COVID-19.

BIAL Award in Biomedicine 2021

Credit: BIAL Foundation

A team led by American scientist Drew Weissman won the second edition of the BIAL Award in Biomedicine with a work focused on mRNA technology, which is now used in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to prevent COVID-19.

The award, promoted by the BIAL Foundation, is worth 300,000 Euros and aims to distinguish a work in biomedicine of exceptional quality and scientific relevance.

The BIAL Award in Biomedicine 2021 was delivered in a ceremony held at the Rectory of the University of Lisbon on 18 February, and was attended by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who chaired the session, the President of the BIAL Foundation, Luís Portela, jury member Menno Witter and award-wining authors Drew Weissman and Michael J. Hogan.

An important breakthrough of this technology for vaccine creation was published in 2017, even before the pandemic, in the research report “Zika virus protection by a single low-dose nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccination”, published in Nature. The research report describes the complex work to engineer an mRNA vaccine to treat a disease and demonstrates its efficacy in mice and in monkeys.

The BIAL Award in Biomedicine 2021 distinguishes the work of Weissman and 36 other co-authors, researchers from the Universities of Pennsylvania, Duke and Kansas State (USA), Harvard Medical School (USA), National Institutes of Health (USA), Bioqual Inc. (USA), Acuitas Therapeutics (Canada) and BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals (Germany) at the time of publication of the research report.

The pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has accelerated research in this area, but this work paves the way for a new generation of vaccines with the potential to revolutionize the treatment of a large number of diseases.

While traditional vaccines often use a modified virus to provoke a reaction in the immune system, the technology investigated by the BIAL Award in Biomedicine winning team uses a synthetic mRNA to allow the body to prepare itself against the disease. To do so, it uses an mRNA that makes the body’s own cells synthesize a viral protein that stimulates the body’s immune response.

Neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs, president of the jury of the BIAL Award in Biomedicine, considers that “this work represents an extraordinary achievement. It is a tour de force in molecular biology aimed at human health, and achieved the technological leap in mRNA vaccines that is the basis for the vaccines currently administered against SARS-CoV-2 to deal with the COVID pandemic in countries around the world”. 

Adolphs emphasizes that “there is now substantial evidence that mRNA technology has enormous applications: in addition to being used to deal with the current pandemic, mRNA vaccines are also being developed for infectious diseases such as malaria and influenza, and also for non-infectious diseases such as cancer“.

The winning work was chosen from 47 papers nominated among the most important research reports in the last 10 years in biomedicine. Applications included basic research studies, clinical trials, work in neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, and infectious diseases.

The next edition of the BIAL Award in Biomedicine, promoted by the BIAL Foundation, will take place in 2023.

 

Authors of the award-winning work and their institutions at the time of publication of the research report:

Department of Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Norbert Pardi, Michael J. Hogan, Hiromi Muramatsu, Veronica M. Holmes & Drew Weissman

Viral Pathogenesis Section, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health, USA

Rebecca S. Pelc, Christina R. DeMaso, Kimberly A. Dowd & Theodore C. Pierson

Bioqual Inc., Rockville, USA

Hanne Andersen, Wendeline Wagner, Alex Granados, Jack Greenhouse, Michelle Walker & Mark G. Lewis

Duke Human Vaccine Institute, Duke University School of Medicine, USA

Laura L. Sutherland, Richard M. Scearce, Robert Parks, Jae-Sung Yu, Charles E. McGee, Gregory D. Sempowski & Barton F. Haynes

Department of Microbiology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Elinor Willis & Scott E. Hensley

Acuitas Therapeutics, Vancouver, Canada

Barbara L. Mui, Ying K. Tam, Thomas D. Madden & Michael J. Hope

Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine and the Biosecurity Research Institute, Kansas State University, USA

Yan-Jang Huang, Dana Vanlandingham & Stephen Higgs

Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, USA

Harikrishnan Balachandran, Sujata Sahu, Michelle Lifton & Sampa Santra

BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals, Germany

Katalin Karikó

Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health, USA

Barney S. Graham

 

 

 



DOI

10.1038/nature21428

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Graphyne

Long-hypothesized ‘next generation wonder material’ created for first time

May 21, 2022
Flower strips next to a conventional wheat field

Organic farming or flower strips – which is better for bees?

May 21, 2022

Haptics device creates realistic virtual textures

May 20, 2022

Researchers unveil a secret of stronger metals

May 20, 2022

POPULAR NEWS

  • Weybourne Atmospheric Observatory

    Breakthrough in estimating fossil fuel CO2 emissions

    46 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 12
  • Hidden benefit: Facemasks may reduce severity of COVID-19 and pressure on health systems, researchers find

    44 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 11
  • Discovery of the one-way superconductor, thought to be impossible

    43 shares
    Share 17 Tweet 11
  • Sweet discovery could drive down inflammation, cancers and viruses

    43 shares
    Share 17 Tweet 11

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Tags

Violence/CriminalsUniversity of WashingtonVaccineVehiclesWeather/StormsWeaponryVirusUrbanizationVaccinesUrogenital SystemVirologyZoology/Veterinary Science

Recent Posts

  • Long-hypothesized ‘next generation wonder material’ created for first time
  • Organic farming or flower strips – which is better for bees?
  • Haptics device creates realistic virtual textures
  • Researchers unveil a secret of stronger metals
  • Contact Us

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

© 2019 Bioengineer.org - Biotechnology news by Science Magazine - Scienmag.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Posting....