Almost exactly a decade ago, on October 2, 2006, Andrew Fire, Ph.D., and Craig Mello, Ph.D., received a call from the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet informing them that they had been jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine–science’s most prestigious prize–for their discovery of RNA interference (RNAi).
But the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, traditionally, is not a finish line when it comes to transforming patient care. It is a starting gun for what can be a grueling marathon–a journey not dissimilar to the one the monoclonal antibodies faced. Success is not assured and is rarely quick: Even Fire, in accepting the award, cautioned researchers they would be waiting “maybe tens of years and maybe more” before the research bore fruit for patients.
