‘Unbelievable’: scientist whose work led to Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna gives vent to years of frustration

Katalin Kariko endured rejection and a demotion as she pursued her theory that mRNA held the key to treating various diseases. A breakthrough came at last

Now the Hungarian-American’s work on using mRNA to deliver instructions to the body’s cells is being applied to a new flu vaccine and to heart failure patients

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A vial of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine after being administered at Roseland Community Hospital in Chicago, the US. Scientist Katalin Kariko’s decades of research work now forms the basis of the Covid-19 vaccine. Photo: TNS

Published: 6:15pm, 20 Dec 2020Updated: 9:06am, 23 Dec 2020

Hungarian-born scientist Katalin Kariko’s obsession with researching a substance called mRNA to fight disease once cost her a faculty position at a prestigious US university, which dismissed the idea as a dead end.

Now, her pioneering work – which paved the way for the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines – could be what saves the world from a 100-year pandemic.

“This is just kind of unbelievable,” she said in a video call from her home in Philadelphia, adding she was unused to the attention after toiling for years in obscurity. It shows why “it’s important science should be supported on many levels”.

Kariko, 65, spent much of the 1990s writing grant applications to fund her investigations into “messenger ribonucleic acid” – genetic molecules that tell cells what proteins to make, essential to keeping our bodies alive and healthy.

A syringe is filled from a vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at Renown Health in Reno, Nevada, the US. Photo: AFP

She believed mRNA held the key to treating diseases where having more of the right kind of protein can help – like repairing the brain after a stroke.