LSC is proud to honor biochemist Katalin Karikó as one of this year’s three recipients of the Genius Awards, which will be presented at the 30th Anniversary Genius Gala on May 22, 2023!

As a child in rural Hungary, Kati Karikó was always curious about the natural world around her. She decided to become a scientist even though she had never met one. As a doctoral student in the early 1980s, Karikó became fascinated by mRNA. She strongly believed that synthesized mRNA could be used to instruct cells to make their own medicines.

She immigrated to the US to pursue her mRNA research. Karikó and a colleague at the University of Pennsylvania, immunologist Dr. Drew Weissman, struggled through a series of successes and setbacks in the lab. When they injected synthetic mRNA into mice, the rodents recognized it as “foreign,” and mounted a strong inflammatory immune response. Eventually, they figured out a way to alter mRNA to allow it to evade the immune system and give the body the correct message. Karikó and Weissman further optimized the modified mRNA so that it could become more effective and target specific areas of the body. The discoveries were just as she’d envisioned as a doctoral student.

In 2013, Dr. Karikó became an SVP at BioNTech, the German biotech firm that teamed up with Pfizer to develop the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Her lifelong work resulted in the vaccine that ultimately protected millions of people worldwide from the serious effects of COVID-19.

Click here to learn more about this year’s Genius Gala.

Genius Gala,  Katalin Karikó