Discoveries related to nucleoside base modifications, an effective factor in the production of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19

The 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Katalin Karikó and Drew Wiseman for the development of an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine. The two scientists began researching mRNA as a platform for protein replacement therapies in the early 1990s but ran into problems due to its inflammatory properties. Their breakthrough discovery in 2005 showed that replacing uridine with pseudouridine renders mRNA non-immunogenic. This paved the way for the development of mRNA-based vaccines at an unprecedented rate and saved countless lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this article is to express the mechanism of vaccines produced based on mRNA and to describe the related research.