By Halimah Olamide
Hungarian-born Biochemist, Katalin Kariko, who is sharing the Nobel Prize in medicine for her work with mRNA vaccines, has recounted how she was previously demoted by the University of Pennsylvania for her research in that area.
She disclosed this in an interview with the Nobel Prize Organization on Monday
‘Ten Years Ago in October, I was kicked out and forced to retire’ She said.
Karikó alongside Drew Weissman of the US won the Nobel Prize in medicine for their work on mRNA vaccines, which has been used to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the journey has been a bumpy one for Karikó, who had to fight her whole career to study mRNA vaccines.
In 1995, UPenn even demoted her because she could not get the financial support to continue her research.
In further studies published in 2008 and 2010, Karikó and Weissman showed that the delivery of mRNA generated with base modifications markedly increased protein production compared to unmodified mRNA.
The effect was due to the reduced activation of an enzyme that regulates protein production. Through their discoveries that base modifications both reduced inflammatory responses and increased protein production, Karikó and Weissman eliminated critical obstacles on the way to clinical applications of mRNA.
Meanwhile, during the interview with the Nobel Prize, Karikó highlighted that the first forty years of one’s life shape a person, including teachers, parents, and friends.
‘I believe that the first forty years of your life, your teachers, parents, they shape you.’
Katalin Karikó was born in 1955 in Szolnok, Hungary. She received her PhD from Szeged’s University in 1982 and performed postdoctoral research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged until 1985.
She then conducted postdoctoral research at Temple University, Philadelphia, and the University of Health Science, Bethesda. In 1989, she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she remained until 2013. After that, she became vice president and later senior vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals.
Since 2021, she has been a Professor at Szeged University and an Adjunct Professor at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.