Avenger of the Week | Dr. Katalin Karikó

If you are among the millions who have received the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccination, you have benefitted from the life’s work, so far, of our Avenger of the Week, biochemist Katalin Karikó.

Over three decades, Dr. Karikó and Drew Weissman worked to develop a way to alter the natural substance messenger RNA (mRNA), which directs protein production in cells in the body, to enter cells  without triggering the body’s immune system, and later they found a way to wrap mRNA inside a lipid nanoparticle so that the molecule could remain intact as it moved through the body. Karikó and Weissmann persevered through a number of setbacks in grant funding, academic status, and others’ skepticism to develop the altered version of mRNA that is essential in making the two major vaccines now being used to fight the global pandemic. They are the first successful vaccines to use mRNA.

Born in Hungary, Karikó grew up in the small town of Kisújszállás and graduated from the University of Szeged. She earned her PhD and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at its Biological Research Center. When research funds ran out in 1985, Karikó, her husband and their toddler daughter came to America, where she joined the faculty at Temple University in Philadelphia. She later joined the faculty at University of Pennsylvania, where she remains today.

According to STAT, a science publication, Karikó spent the 1990s collecting rejections to fund her work on mRNA, because it was too far-fetched for government grants, corporate funding, and even support from her own colleagues. In 1995, she was demoted, although she had been on track to become a full professor, because there were no funds coming in to support her mRNA research.

“I thought of going somewhere else, or doing something else,” Karikó said of that time. “I also thought maybe I’m not good enough, not smart enough. I tried to imagine: Everything is here, and I just have to do better experiments.”

She kept at it for more than a decade and, with immunologist and long time collaborator Dr.Weissman, discovered a way to modify the mRNA so it did not trigger an immune reaction, the hope for a successful vaccine using the discovery was elusive until last fall when both Pfizer and Moderna used it to produce the first effective vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Every mRNA vaccination around the globe is due in no small part to her life-saving persistence and tenacity, so with deep gratitude we salute biochemist Dr. Katalin Karikó as our GenderAvenger Avenger of the Week.

Biochemist Dr. Katalin Karikó, a scientist behind the development of the mRNA-based vaccines for COVID-19, is the @GenderAvenger #AvengerOfTheWeek! Her work has literally changed the world. Thank you, @kkariko! #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-dr-katalin-kariko