Globe and Mail "COVID-19 vaccine pioneers honoured at Gairdner awards ceremony"

"For the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers from around the world whose groundbreaking work has earned a Gairdner award – Canada’s most prestigious medical science prize – were in Toronto to receive the accolade in person.

Fittingly, among those honoured at a gala on Thursday were three scientists whose discoveries have played a large role in making such gatherings possible.

Katalin Kariko, a senior vice-president with the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, and her collaborator Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania received their Canada Gairdner International Awards for showing how messenger RNA, a molecule that normally carries genetic information from DNA to other parts of the cell, can be re-engineered to work as a vaccine.