Corona Daily 128: I Felt Like a God

A chance meeting at a Xerox machine in 1997 may have been responsible for changing the course of the pandemic last year. One of the two at the photocopier was Dr Katalin (Kati) Kariko.

Kati Kariko was born in Communist Hungary in 1955. Her father was a butcher, her mother an accountant. Kati loved biology. She earned a PhD at Hungary’s Szeged University and started working as a post-doctoral fellow at the university’s Biological Research center. In 1985, the research programme ran out of money. By now Kati had a two year old daughter. The family decided to bite the bullet, and move to the USA.

They sold the car on the black market. That time, the communist government allowed people to leave the country with a maximum of $100. The family had raised $1000 by selling everything. Kati hid them in her daughter’s teddy bear. They bought a one way ticket to the USA. When the three landed, they didn’t know anyone there.

Kati Kariko managed to find work as a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. She was intense and single minded. Her singular focus throughout her career was on messenger RNA (mRNA), the genetic script that carries DNA instruction to cells to make their own medicines. “I felt like a god.” She recalls her feeling the first time she saw her idea working in a lab.

Life was difficult and stressful at the University. She was moved from one lab to another. Scientists need to pitch to get grants for their ideas. Some of the brainiest scientists don’t have the skill to write the grant requests. Kati was one of them. Her wild and fanciful ideas could not be sold; nobody was willing to pay for research. Her ideas went against conventional wisdom.

The university expected her to quit. She was demoted, derailed from becoming a professor. A boss tried to get her deported, since she still held a Hungarian passport.

*****

Kati managed to stay on. In 1997, at a Xerox machine in the university, she saw a balding man. While making copies, she started talking to him. His name was Drew Weissman. He was a professor of Medicine.

“I am an RNA scientist – I can make anything with mRNA” Said Kati. Dr Weissman said he wanted to make a vaccine against HIV. “Yeah, yeah, I can do that” said Kati.

Despite her boasting, her research on mRNA was completely stopped. The two of them started writing grants. Most of them were rejected. Nobody was interested in mRNA. The people who reviewed the grants said mRNA would not be a good therapeutic, so please don’t bother.

Leading scientific journals rejected their work. In 2005, they finally managed to get an academic paper on mRNA published. It received little attention.

*****

In 2013, Kati finally left the university. She had two job offers. One offer was from Moderna, a company based in Germany. It didn’t even have a website. Kariko took the other offer, from a company called BioNTech. She was given a senior VP role as a researcher.

Kati continued to work day and night. On one New Year Eve, she found herself dozing in the lab chair when the world outside greeted the new year. Kati realized she hadn’t taken a single holiday in the year that had just passed.

*****

Chinese scientists posted the genetic sequence of the virus found in Wuhan in January 2020. Dr Kati Kariko and her colleagues at BioNTech designed its mRNA vaccine in hours. Moderna designed it in two days.

Pfizer partnered with BioNTech to produce the first covid vaccine. The University of Pennsylvania suddenly began boasting about its former professor Dr Kariko being the original thinker behind the mRNA vaccine. The 2005 paper written by Dr Kariko and Dr Weissman began to be widely cited in 2020-2021. It will be a surprise if the two don’t get the Nobel Prize this year.

On 18 December both were vaccinated at the University of Pennsylvania. It turned out to be a press event. The journalists took photos, those present clapped. Kati Kariko wept.

Ravi