HALL OF FAMERS

Developing the Tech that Made COVID Vaccines Possible

KATALIN KARIKÓ SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, BIONTECH ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF NEUROSURGERY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

IATALIN KARIKÓ ADMITS that at the beginning of 2020, when word began to spread of a novel virus called COVID-19, she really didn’t think it would turn into a pandemic. She was as surprised as anyone. But there was one difference: She was ready. She’d been getting ready, in a sense, for almost 40 years.

Karikó, a molecular biologist, had been working since her student days on messenger RNA—mRNA for short—a compound in living cells that carries genetic instructions for making proteins for all sorts of purposes. It has turned out to be the key ingredient in the COVID-19 vaccines jointly made by Pfizer and BioNTech, and by their competitor Moderna.

“I thought this would be good for something,” she says now. “I hoped that maybe I would live long enough to see one person who would benefit.”

It has not been