Drew Weissman is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research and director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation in Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine. He is recognised for his work alongside Katalin Karikó in discovering the modified mRNA technology, which has launched a new era of vaccine development. Their mRNA research breakthrough has been used in both the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines and has revolutionised the field of vaccine development. Weissman’s current research focuses on developing a pan-coronavirus vaccine to stop the next coronavirus epidemic, a universal flu vaccine, cancer therapeutics, and a vaccine to prevent herpes.

Weissman earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biochemistry and enzymology from Brandeis University in 1981 and his M.D. and Ph.D. in immunology and microbiology in 1987 at Boston University School of Medicine. Following a residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, he took a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where he worked with Anthony Fauci.

Weissman holds many patents and has published over 200 papers. He has been recognised with numerous awards including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research.

More about Drew Weissman and the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Photo: Courtesy of Penn Medicine. Photography: Peggy Peterson