[Speaking about her journey on mRNA research, Katalin Kariko, who is now 68, recalled how she was "kicked out" of the University of Pennsylvania and was forced to retire ten years ago. (Image: Bela Francia)]
Stockholm: In a dramatic comeback, Hungarian-American Biochemist Katalin Karikó who was kicked out of her job ten years ago has won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Katalin Karikó shared the honour with American Physician Scientist Drew Weissman.
The two have been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries concerning nucleoside base modifications that enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
“The discoveries by the two Nobel Laureates were critical for developing effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 during the pandemic that began in early 2020”, Nobel Foundation said in a statement.
“Through their ground-breaking findings, which have fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system, the laureates contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times”, the foundation said.
In her first reaction on winning Nobel Prize, Kariko while talking to Adam Smith, the Chief Scientific Officer at Nobel Prize Outreach, said that she thought "somebody was joking".
“I was sleeping and it was my husband who picked up the phone”, she said about the call from the Nobel Foundation. “My first reaction was somebody must be joking”, she said.
“I was sleeping and it was my husband who picked up the phone”, she said about the call from the Nobel Foundation.
“My first reaction was somebody must be joking”, she said.
Speaking about her journey on mRNA research, Katalin Kariko, who is now 68, recalled how she was "kicked out" of the University of Pennsylvania and was forced to retire ten years ago.
“(at this crucial juncture) My husband supported me a lot”, she said adding that she joined BioNTech in Germany.
BioNTech later partnered with Pfizer in 2020 to develop mRNA vaccines against Covid-19 for which Katalin Kariko has been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology.
She said that for nine long years, she frequently travelled between Germany, where the company was located, and the United States.
"I have conducted all my experiments with my own hands at the age of 58. I was 58 years old and I was still culturing plasmids and feeding cells", she said.
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.
Drew Weissman was born in 1959 in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA. He received his MD, PhD degrees from Boston University in 1987. He did his clinical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School and postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health. In 1997, Weissman established his research group at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
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