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Katalin Karikó is a Hungarian-American biochemist specializing in RNA-mediated mechanisms. Kariko is the senior vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals and scientist behind the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.
Karikó studied at the University of Szeged's Biological Research Centre, earning her Bachelor's in Biology and PhD in Biochemistry. Karikó began her RNA research at the research centre before continuing it in post-doctorate work at Temple University from 1985–1988 and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences from 1988–1989. She joined the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine as Adjunct Professor in 1989, a position she still holds.
Karikó is the mother of US Olympic gold medalist rower Susan Francia, who won gold at both Beijing and London.
Karikó left Hungary in 1995 to join Temple University's School of Medicine. She entered the United States with her engineer husband, two-year-old (future Olympian) daughter, and the money she had from selling their car.
Karikó joined the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine as adjunct professor in 1989, where she first started working with mRNA to treat cystic fibrosis and strokes. While working at Penn, she met Drew Weissman, a researcher working on an HIV vaccine. The two achieved a major mRNA breakthrough, solving inflammatory reactions from injections. Karikó and Weissman discovered that if modified nucleosides were incorporated into mRNA, the immunogenicity of RNA was lower, and production of the protein encoded by the RNA was higher, which increased the potential for using mRNA to treat disease. Derrick Rossi, who later cofounded Moderna, recognized the importance of their findings after they reported them in 2005.
Weissman and Karikó (as chief executive) started a company in 2006 to sell mRNA drugs but were unable to make it to clinical trials and saw the university sell their patent to third-party CellScript.
Karikó and Weissman were jointly awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, “for their discoveries concerning nucleotide base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.”
Karikó joined BioNTech in early 2013, following news that Moderna had struck a USD$240 million deal with AstraZeneca to develop a VEGF mRNA. After previously working on a patented mRNA treatment at the University of Pennsylvania, the university sold the patent, which limited her ability to work in the field and pushed her to join the German biochemical company.
Her mRNA work has been incorporated into the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines, which show about 95% efficacy in late-stage clinical trials.
