A biochemist from Hungary, Katalin Kariko is among the fourth vaccine scientists apart from Kizzmekia Corbett, Barney Graham and Drew Weissman who has been announced Time Magazine’s 2021 'Heroes of the Year'. Describing the Heroes of The Year as ’The Miracle Workers’, TIME shared, "The four were hardly alone in those efforts: scientists around the world have produced COVID-19 vaccines using a variety of platforms and technologies."
"Many—like the shots from Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson–Janssen—came from more established methods, modified with impressive speed to fight a new virus. Still, Corbett, Graham, Kariko and Weissman achieved a breakthrough of singular importance, introducing an innovative and highly effective vaccine platform, based on mRNA, that will impact our health and well-being far beyond this pandemic."
Kariko specializes in RNA-mediated mechanisms. Her research has been the development of in vitro-transcribed mRNA for protein therapies.
She did her graduation in biology from the University of Szeged. She also did a postgraduation and PhD in biochemistry from the same University.
In 1985, she left Hungary for the United States with her husband and 2-year daughter. At the time, the Hungarian government had issued a diktat that citizen cannot take more than $50 with them when they leave the country so Kariko reportedly sewed $1,200 inside her infant daughter’s teddy bear.
In 1989, she was hired by the University of Pennsylvania and worked with cardiologist Elliot Barnathan on messenger RNA. She had to face several rejections as her work including an attempt to harness the power of mRNA to fight disease, was too far-fetched for government grants, corporate funding, and even support from her own colleagues.
By 1995, after six years on the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, Kariko got demoted. She later started working in the neurosurgery department of the university.
At the University she met Immunologist Drew Weissman in 1997. He was developing a vaccine against HIV and other diseases. She collaborated with him and they both worked together in vaccine development and synthetic RNA which eventually turned out the origin of COVID-19 vaccines that were produced by Pfizer (developed by BioNTech) and by Moderna.
She co-founded and was CEO of RNARx, from 2006 to 2013. Since 2013, she has been associated with BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals, first as a vice president and promoted to senior vice president in 2019. Not just this, she also is an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania.[1]
