Katalin Karikó Interview - Dialogs Beyond Borders

Katalin Karikó is a professor at University of Szeged and adjunct professor at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, where she worked for 24 years. She is the former Senior Vice President of BioNTech SE where she worked between 2013 and 2022. She received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from University of Szeged, Hungary in 1982. For four decades, her research has been focusing on RNA-mediated mechanisms with the ultimate goal of developing in vitro-transcribed mRNA for protein replacement therapy. She investigated RNA-mediated immune activation and co-discovered that nucleoside modifications suppress immunogenicity of RNA, which widened the therapeutic potentials of mRNA. She is co-inventor on mRNA-related patents for application of non-immunogenic, nucleoside-modified RNA for vaccines and therapies. Twenty-two of those are granted by the US. She co-founded and, from 2006-2013, served as CEO of RNARx, a company dedicated to the development nucleoside-modified mRNA for therapy. She is a founding member of the scientific planning committee for the International mRNA Health Conference, an annual non-profit meeting for advancements of mRNA technology, inaugurated in 2013. Her patent, co-invented with Drew Weissman on nucleoside-modified uridines in mRNA is used to create the FDA-approved COVID-19 mRNA vaccines by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna. For this invention, they also share the 2023 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.