The 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded on Monday to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for the development of messenger RNA vaccines against COVID-19. But who is biochemist Katalin Karikó? She had no phone or credit card when she first arrived in the United States with her husband and 2-year-old daughter.
Pfizer vaccinePhoto: Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
The prize, one of the most prestigious in the scientific world, was decided by the Nobel Assembly of the Karolinska Institute medical university in Sweden and comes with 11 million Swedish kroner (about 1 million dollars).
The story of the researcher who risked her career to develop a messenger RNA vaccine
Biochemist Katalin Karikó had neither a phone nor a credit card when she first arrived in the United States with her husband and 2-year-old daughter, she wrote Business Insider.
“It was a one-way ticket,” she told Business Insider, adding that she didn’t know anyone in the US.
It was 1985. The family was moving from Hungary to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Karikó was to take a postdoctoral position at Temple University.
The couple were only allowed to exchange $100 but Karikó found a way around the rule: he hid £900 in his daughter’s teddy bear. They got the money by selling the family car on the black market.
In a way, his entire career would be based on this kind of inventiveness.
In 2005, she discovered a way to configure messenger RNA (mRNA) – a molecule that initiates protein production – so that it goes undetected by the body’s natural defense system.
The discovery paved the way for what would prove to be one of the greatest achievements of modern science: the world’s first RNA vaccines.
Karikó, now 68, oversaw protein substitution at BioNTech, the German biotech company that developed a vaccine against COVID-19 alongside US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. His work has also inspired Moderna, the US biotech company that has developed a competing COVID-19 vaccine.
Both vaccines they developed use mRNA to deliver a coded message that triggers an immune response from the body.
What is messenger RNA vaccine?
RNA and DNA are macromolecules indispensable to all forms of life known to date, along with proteins, lipids and carbohydrates. Human DNA is located in the cell nucleus. Messenger RNA is found in the cell’s cytoplasm—outside the nucleus—and has a much more specific role, such as transmitting information about protein synthesis in the cell. Since the messenger RNA does not enter the cell nucleus, it cannot influence the cell’s own DNA, it is stated on the official site dedicated to anti-COVID-19 vaccination.
Vaccines using messenger RNA technology use a sequence of messenger RNA, which, once introduced into cells, transmits the message to synthesize the Spike protein, the surface protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The amount of messenger RNA per vaccine dose is standardized, which will ensure the production of a predefined level of Spike protein. The human body’s identification of this protein as foreign triggers an immune response that is responsible for building immunity against COVID-19.
Basically, the messenger RNA represents the “manual” after which human cells learn to produce the Spike protein, so that the body can build the necessary mechanisms to be able to defend itself against COVID-19 if it comes into contact with the SARS-CoV2 virus, the source states cited.
mRNA comes from the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) molecule that gives cells “instructions” for making proteins.
The human body naturally produces mRNA and needs it to make vital proteins.
Unlike most vaccines that contain a weakened or inactivated bacterium or virus, mRNA vaccines use mRNA instead of a bacterium or virus.
