Today we are talking to Drew Weissman. Drew is the Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research at Perelman School of Medicine and Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation at the University of Pennsylvania. Drew has spent his career working on RNA biology and vaccine development. He, along with his colleague Katalin Kariko, have been pivotal in the development of mRNA vaccines most notably the COVID-19 vaccines developed by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna. 

Drew received his MD/PhD from Boston University in 1987, following which he did a residency at Beth Israel and followship at the NIH under Anthony Fauci. He has received numerous awards including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award and Rosenstiel Award.

Today we discuss Drew’s career trajectory, mRNA biology and vaccine development.