This year for Women’s History Month, we are highlighting different women each week who, although you may have not heard of previously, have contributed greatly to society.
First to be highlighted is Katalin Karikó, PhD, for her contributions to mRNA technology and the COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Karikó is a biochemist, adjunct Professor of Neurosurgery and researcher at Penn Medicine.
Dr. Karikó and her colleagues invented the modified mRNA technology used in Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infection.
Born in Hungary, she has been working in the USA since 1985 at the University of Pennsylvania and more lately at BioNTech as a Senior Vice president. More than 15 years ago at Penn Medicine, Dr. Karikó and co-collaborator Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, found a way to modify mRNA and later developed a delivery technique to package the mRNA in lipid nanoparticles. This made it possible for mRNA to reach the proper part of the body and trigger an immune response to fight disease.
These laboratory breakthroughs made mRNA safe, effective, and practical for use as a vaccine against COVID. The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine received FDA approval in August 2021, and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine has been authorized by the FDA for emergency use.
Now she is being honored for this by the Würzburg Societas Physico-Medica in Germany. She is “the woman behind the vaccine breakthrough”, as Euronews writes. She made “a discovery that now seems worthy of a Nobel Prize to many experts”, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. And for the New York Times, she is “the woman who helped protect the world from the new Corona virus”.
This award is the highest award in the life sciences at the University of Würzburg, and this is the first time the Societas Physico-Medica has awarded the prize to a woman.
“Without the fundamental work of Katalin Karikó, it would not have been possible to develop an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 within such a short time.” – Professor Manfred Schartl, Chairman of Physico-Medica
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Sources:
• Katalin Kariko, PhD profile | PennMedicine.org
• The woman behind the development of mRNA-based vaccines against coronavirus (news-medical.net)