JCU Alum's RNA Research Catalyst for 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine

The Building Blocks of Modern Vaccines

Bevilacqua's contribution to the Nobel Prize-winning research began long before the COVID-19 pandemic. It was rooted in his earlier work on RNA, where he and his team focused on RNA nucleoside modification of RNA in cells. This process alters the sequence of RNA, allowing the cell to create different amounts of proteins. These molecular changes help humans better tolerate vaccines and other treatments.

"This works by suppressing our immune response so that our bodies don't see the mRNA in the vaccine as so foreign," says Bevilacqua.

This groundbreaking work was not initially directed at mRNA vaccines. In fact, the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was not awarded for the COVID vaccines, but for the discoveries of nucleoside-based modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. The nucleoside-based changes made the vaccines more tolerable to the human body, contributing to their efficacy and accelerating the fight against the pandemic.

The Impact of Scientific Research

This research is even more remarkable because it demonstrates the unpredictability of scientific discoveries. Bevilacqua's work on RNA modification was fundamental research conducted approximately 15 years before COVID-19 was a global pandemic. At that time, mRNA vaccines were not a widely known concept, and there was no race to combat the pandemic.

Bevilacqua believes this story has an essential message - the value of supporting basic scientific research.