Ceremony announcing the winners of 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in Stockholm, Sweden, October 7, 2024. (Photo: Getty Images/VNA)

The Nobel Prize committee announced the prestigious honor, seen as the pinnacle of scientific achievement, in Sweden on Monday. Nobel Committee Secretary General Thomas Perlmann speaks to the media that this is the opening prize of this year's Nobel Week.

"The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute has today decided to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation," said Perlmann.

The work focuses on the discovery of an important regulatory mechanism used by cells through microRNAs, a new class of small RNA molecules, to control gene activity.

Ambros, born in 1953, a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, conducted the research that earned him the prize at Harvard University. Ruvkun, born in 1952, conducted his research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

The two scientists discovered microRNA in the early 1990s and have since made many contributions to the field. They will be awarded a Nobel certificate, a Nobel medal each and share a prize of nearly 1 million USD.