Who is the Hungarian developer of the mRNA vaccine?

Who is the Hungarian developer of the mRNA vaccine? – Katalin Karikó is the Hungarian developer of the mRNA vaccine.

She is a biochemist who specializes in protein replacement treatment using in vitro-transcribed messenger RNA (mRNA), which is one of the RNA-mediated mechanisms that she studies. Karikó overcame significant challenges and criticism within the scientific community to lay the scientific foundation for mRNA vaccines.

Karikó was born in Kisjszállás, Hungary in 1955 and obtained her PhD in 1982 from the University of Szeged, where she studied chemistry.

In order to seek a postdoctoral position at Temple University, she relocated to the US in 1985. After that, she began working as a member of the University of Pennsylvania faculty.

Karikó began her research on mRNA vaccines in the early 1990s. At the time, mRNA vaccines were considered to be too unstable and toxic to be used in humans. However, Karikó and her colleagues discovered that by making certain modifications to the mRNA molecule, they could overcome these challenges.

In 2005, Karikó and her colleague Drew Weissman published a landmark paper that showed that mRNA vaccines could be used to safely and effectively trigger an immune response against specific diseases. This discovery paved the way for the development of the first mRNA vaccines, which were approved for use in humans in 2020.

Karikó’s work has had a profound impact on the fight against COVID-19. The two most effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, are based on her research. These vaccines have saved millions of lives and helped to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control.

For their research on mRNA vaccines, Karikó and Weissman received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023. She is the first woman from Hungary to get the Nobel Prize.