Drew Weissman

Drew Weissman (born 1959) is an American physician-scientist best known for his contributions to RNA biology. His work helped enable development of mRNA vaccines, the best known of which are those for COVID-19 produced by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna. Weissman is the inaugural Roberts Family Professor in Vaccine Research, Director of the Penn Institute for RNA Innovation, and professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). He and his research colleague Katalin Karikó have received numerous awards including the presigious Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.
Weissman grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. He received his B.A. and M.A. from Brandeis University in 1981, where he majored in biochemistry and enzymology and he worked in the lab of Gerald Fasman. He performed his graduate work in immunology and microbiology to receive h…