Katalin Karikó

Katalin Karikó is a biochemist whose work on nucleoside-modified mRNA opened the way to mRNA vaccines and therapeutics. She is Professor at the University of Szeged, her alma mater, and Adjunct Professor of Neurosurgery at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked for 24 years. She is also Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Repeat Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech company. In 2023 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with Drew Weissman.

For four decades her research has focused on RNA-mediated mechanisms, with the goal of developing in vitro-transcribed mRNA for protein therapy. With Weissman she co-discovered that nucleoside modifications suppress the immunogenicity of RNA, widening the therapeutic potential of mRNA. That discovery underpins the BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines and holds promise for the treatment of many other diseases.

From 2013 to 2022, Karikó was Senior Vice President at BioNTech in Mainz, and she earlier co-founded and led RNARx. Alongside the Nobel Prize, she has received the Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Japan Prize and the Princess of Asturias Award.

She received her BSc in biology in 1978 and her PhD in biochemistry in 1982 from the University of Szeged, and moved to the United States in 1985 for postdoctoral work at Temple University in Philadelphia.