Katalin Karikó was born on January 17, 1955 in a small town in Hungary. She was the daughter of a butcher and she always knew she wanted to be a scientist. She earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Szeged and began her career at the University’s Biological Research Center, where she first began working with mRNA - the genetic script that carries DNA instructions to each cell’s protein-making machinery. When her research program ran out of funding in 1985, she had to either abandon her work or start over somewhere new. She chose to start over. Kariko eventually immigrated to the United States to accept a postdoctoral fellowship at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1989, she joined the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. The years that followed were marked by repeated setbacks - lost labs, denied grants, and a demotion that left her questioning her own ability. But in 1998, she met immunologist Drew Weismann and the two collaborated for decades, which eventually led to their inventions and discoveries that modernized and revolutionized medicine.
In 2005, Kariko and Weismann made a landmark breakthrough by identifying how modified mRNA nucleosides could enter cells without triggering a counterproductive immune response. They patented this technology, listed it to Moderna and BioNTech, and then founded their own company called RNARx. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, their decades of work became the foundation for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which were developed and deployed faster than any vaccine in history. In 2023, Kariko and Weismann were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She was also recognized with the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize. The little girl who smuggled her savings to the United States went on to save millions of lives all over the world.
References
Rogers, Kara. “Katalin Kariko | Research, Mrna, & Covid-19 Vaccine | Britannica.” Katalin Karikó, www.britannica.com/biography/Katalin-Kariko.
“Kati Karikó | National Women’s History Museum.” Kati Karikó, 1 Oct. 2021, www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/kati-kariko.