2024 Nobel Prize In Medicine Won by US Scientists For microRNA Discovery

US-based scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were selected for the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of microRNA and its role in gene regulation.

The winners for medicine were selected by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute Medical University. The winners will receive a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million).

The remaining five Nobel Prizes will be unveiled over the coming days.

Created in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel, the prizes have been awarded for breakthroughs in science, literature and peace since 1901, while economics is a later addition.

In 2023, the medicine prize was awarded to the runaway favourites Katalin Kariko, a Hungarian scientist, and U.S. colleague Drew Weissman, for discoveries that paved the way for COVID-19 vaccines that helped curb the pandemic.

Past winners of the Nobel medicine prize include many famous researchers such as Ivan Pavlov in 1904, most known for his experiments on behaviour using dogs, and Alexander Fleming, who shared the 1945 prize for the discovery of penicillin.