Katalin Kariko: Winner of Nobel Prize for Medicine 2023: A Woman Scientist Who Made Possible the mRNA Vaccine for Covid

Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, winners of Winner of Nobel Prize for Medicine 2023

A Life’s Struggle, Work, and Sweet Reward

Katalin Kariko's life will sound familiar to anyone who believes in herself but is not trusted to deliver by the rest of the world. It will also be relatable to those who uprooted themselves and crossed continents to pursue their dreams. Moving with her baby and husband to the USA from her home country, Hungary, with no income to sustain her small family and no definitive plan on how to move forward as a scientist, was a huge step that Katalin Kariko took; with no anchor in life save her love for science and the support of her husband. When she is honoured with the Nobel Prize for proving the healing power of mRNA, which led to the development of a vaccine for COVID-19, the world is once again celebrating the victory of an individual’s struggle in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversities.

Katalin Kariko's Research and Covid 19

Kariko’s and Drew Weissman’s paper on mRNA became a worldwide sensation only when the COVID-19 pandemic tightened its grip on the world in 2020. The theoretical prediction that these two scientists made about the therapeutic power of mRNA became the foundation for the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. In a world where women scientists in fundamental science are still a rarity, owing to the unequal starting points that exist for men and women in the race of scientific pursuits (an unequal race it is, when it comes to money, recognition, time, and support) Katalin Kariko has made all the women of the world proud.

For those who are scientifically inclined, here is a quote from the press release of the Nobel Prize explaining how mRNA works,

“RNA contains four bases, abbreviated A, U, G, and C, corresponding to A, T, G, and C in DNA, the letters of the genetic code. Karikó and Weissman knew that bases in RNA from mammalian cells are frequently chemically modified, while in vitro transcribed mRNA is not. They wondered if the absence of altered bases in the in vitro transcribed RNA could explain the unwanted inflammatory reaction. To investigate this, they produced different variants of mRNA, each with unique chemical alterations in their bases, which they delivered to dendritic cells. The results were striking: The inflammatory response was almost abolished when base modifications were included in the mRNA. This was a paradigm change in our understanding of how cells recognise and respond to different forms of mRNA. Karikó and Weissman immediately understood that their discovery had profound significance for using mRNA as therapy. These seminal results were published in 2005, fifteen years before the COVID-19 pandemic” (Nobel Prize 2023 Press release).

The Fruits of Hard Labour

After a long-drawn tussle with the system to prove her brilliance and to get the resources for her research, Katalin Kariko and her colleague and co-Nobel Prize winner, Drew Weissman, published a paper in 2005 that eventually saved the lives of millions of people on the planet. The paper had a rather long title that read, ‘Suppression of RNA Recognition by Toll-Like Receptors: The Impact of Nucleoside Modification and the Evolutionary Origin of RNA’. However, it was simply about how the immune response of a human body can be modified using mRNA. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for Covid 19 have their basic structure derived from Kariko’s mRNA research. The newsletter announcing the Nobel Prize of 2023 said that Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman are being awarded for “their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines.”

The Early Life of Katalin Kariko

As Kariko reminisced in a speech after receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Radboud, the Netherlands, before the pandemic, she had never been “in the spotlight”. Her life was modest and uneventful save for her path-breaking research work that continued for 4 decades. To believe that one is doing great work and still not expect recognition and to continue working relentlessly for decades, one needs a mind that is clear, focused, and dedicated. Kariko’s mind had all these qualities. Growing up in a rustic and small Hungarian town, the first thing she learned from her rural life and equally from her parents was hard work. Their house in Kisújszállás had no running water, television or a refrigerator. Her father was a butcher, and her mother was a bookkeeper. Her silent research work now spans 40 years and has put her on top of the world as one of the most brilliant minds of our time.

Katalin Kariko’s Life in USA

Katalin Kariko migrated to the US in 1985. Even before that, she had started her work on liposome bubbles, a potential medium to embed genetic material within, and also on RNA. The year she started her work was 1978, and at that time, she was working from a lab in Hungary. Her migration to America was upon the compulsion of circumstances when she lost her job at the Biological Research Centre, Szeged, Hungary, owing to a lack of financial support. In Philadelphia, she joined Temple University as a postdoctoral student. After that, she worked in Bethesda, Md. and at Penn’s Medical School.

Kariko’s research consumed all her time, and her daughter Susan grew up learning to be self-reliant as her mother was not around most of the time. However, during school holidays, she used to visit her mom’s lab and hang out there. Kariko was not a good sailor when it came to manoeuvring the narrow academic channels of power and resources. And she was not known to mince her words. Her colleague, David Langer, told The Washington Post once, “She knows she’s brilliant, and she doesn’t suffer fools.”

How Katalin Kariko’s Perseverance Saved the World

Debbie Dadey, a mother who lost her son to Covid 19, has authored an illustrated children’s book about the life of Kariko, showing us how this scientist and her work inspired even those who suffered unfathomable losses during the pandemic. Katalin Kariko’s scientific perseverance made it to the headlines after the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine was proven to be capable of giving 90% protection against coronavirus. The Moderna vaccine was also developed based on her work. At that time, talking to The Telegraph, Kariko said, “When I am knocked down, I know how to pick myself up.” She had put her entire career at risk by continuing to work on mRNA, an endeavour that many thought a futile exercise at that time. The grants she applied for were rejected many times. She was even demoted from her job as an eventuality of her failure to get funds. Even some of her colleagues doubted her line of thought regarding mRNA. They thought she was obsessive and obstinate.

The favourite quote of Katalin Kariko was a line uttered by Leonardo da Vinci, “Experiments never err, your expectations do.” She was always confident about the positive outcome of her research on mRNA, even when obstacles came in the way many times. It was in the 1990s that Kariko met Drew Weissman and started to work with him. Together, they developed ways to avert the inflammatory response of mRNA and published their paper, the rest being history. Weissman is now a professor of vaccine research at the University of Pennsylvania. mRNA-based research is still ongoing and shows huge promise in developing potential flu vaccines, cancer medicines, HIV medicines, and cures for multiple sclerosis and sickle-cell disease.

Kariko's life and work have touched and healed millions of people's lives who survived the pandemic only because she did not quit when prompted by many. The hours and hours that she spent in her lab designing methods and processes, making errors, correcting herself, repeating her experiments, and later explaining to others who often were unsympathetic listeners why she needed more time and how she felt she was on the right path have attained fruition. Despairing and then picking herself up again, as she said she was used to doing, Kariko has delivered not only herself but all of us "redemption" and many more years to live.

References

‘Redemption’: How a Scientist’s Unwavering Belief in mRNA Gave the World a Covid-19 Vaccine, Sarah Newey, December 2, 2020, The Telegraph.

Never Give Up: Dr. Kati Karico and the Race for the Future of Vaccines, Debbie Dadey, 2023, Millbrook Press.

Press release, The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2023, October 2, 2023, The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet.

A One-Way Ticket. A Cash-Stuffed Teddy Bear. A DreamDecades in the Making, Carolyn Y Johnson, October 1, 2021, The Washington Post.

Honorary Doctorate: Dr Katalin Kariko, Katalin Kariko and Floris Rutjes, 2023, Radboud University Press.