Noubar Afeyan on celebrating Nobel Laureates Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros

Noubar Afeyan, Founder & CEO, Flagship Pioneering, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Heartfelt congratulations to Massachusetts scientists Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros, awarded this year’s The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of microRNA, a molecule that controls how the instructions for life, DNA, are expressed in cells.

With this news, I am again reminded of what I often refer to as “the second Massachusetts Miracle”: the vast depth and brilliance of the Commonwealth’s life sciences ecosystem – the individuals prosecuting cutting-edge science, the institutions where they grow and flourish, and the impact on humanity.

Dr. Ruvkun is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and a Mass General Hospital investigator, while Dr. Ambros is a professor of natural science at the UMass Chan Medical School. Both also completed their educations in Massachusetts: Dr. Ruvkun completed his doctoral work at Harvard University, while Dr. Ambros received both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he also did postdoctoral research. In Massachusetts, our genius is both homegrown and world changing.

Along with celebrating these two researchers’ historic contributions, this award stands as a reminder of the enormous power and potential of RNA technologies. By now, it’s common knowledge that messenger RNA technology drove creation of a safe and effective Covid vaccine at record speed, saving millions of lives. What’s far less well known is that this is just one of countless potential use cases, with others now advancing through the clinical pipeline to address a range of infectious disease, rare diseases, allergies, cardiovascular issues, and even cancer. For example, Flagship Founded Moderna began this year with 45 therapeutic and vaccine programs, nine in late-stage development, including a personalized cancer vaccine for melanoma, now in phase 3 trials, and an RSV vaccine for older adults that received FDA approval in May.

Notably, this is the second consecutive year that the Nobel has gone to researchers for RNA breakthroughs – last year’s prize went to Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for foundational discoveries that helped to pave the way for mRNA Covid vaccines – but I suspect it will not be the last. RNA technology has changed the world, and this is just the beginning.”