“Don’t focus on what you cannot change,” says Katalin Karikó as a reaction to the fact she was pushed out of the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a research assistant professor. “Because you are fired, don’t start to feel sorry for yourself. You just have to focus on what’s next because that’s what you can change.”
Hungarian Immigrant
Born in the small town of Szolnok in Hungary, Karikó earned her Ph.D. at the University of Szeged and did her postdoctoral work at its Biological Research Center. After a few years, the university ran out of money and eliminated her position. “We were out of money, so that’s it,” she says for CNBC. She had applied for scholarships in Western Europe, but without success. Then, Temple University biochemistry professor Robert J. Suhadolnik invited her to be a postdoctoral student in Philadelphia. She, her husband, and her two-year-old daughter, Susan, immigrated in 1985. In Hungary, there was still a communist regime.
“I was nobody,” she says while commemorating her research career. “I was not a famous speaker. So many immigrant scientists are like that. Every time I get an award, I am thinking about them. Why I didn’t stop researching is because I did not crave recognition.”
In 1989, she moved on to the University of Pennsylvania, where she spent the next 24 years doing research.
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Passion for Little Molecule
When she ran into Drew Weissman at a photocopier shortly after his arrival at the university in 1997, he told her he wanted to make an HIV vaccine. She said she could do that. Their paper on how mRNA might be used to deliver new instructions to diseased cells was published in 2005 and met with no fanfare. In 2008, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School stumbled across it and elaborated on it to publish his own research in 2010, crediting both Karikó and Weissman. In 2013, Karikó joined BioNTech, which was later tasked with designing the COVID-19 vaccine, according to CNBC.
Having begun working with RNA during her graduate studies, Karikó has been “passionate about this little molecule ever since.” mRNA is the genetic material in the human body that instructs cells to make proteins. At the heart of the COVID-19 vaccines is modified, synthetic mRNA that is delivered into the human body and instructs cells to make copies of the virus’ spike protein. Later, the body’s immune system will recognise the real virus upon exposure, and a rapid immune response will occur to protect against severe disease. Unmodified mRNA molecules are unable to slip past the body’s immune system, but Karikó and Weissman modified mRNA so it could remain active longer, and efficiently instruct cells to create antigens to protect against severe disease.
Fourteen US Patents
Katalin Karikó holds 14 U.S. patents and is a professor at the University of Szeged in Hungary and an adjunct professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also a founding member of the planning committee for the International mRNA Health Conference, an event held annually since 2013. She was awarded the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 2021. According to the web on the National Inventors Hall of Fame, as she accepted this award, she remarked, “I think about all of the young girls who may become inspired by my story and want to become scientists. To them, I say, stay curious, adopt the right attitude and stay on the track no matter how long and winding that road may be.”
