Kariko Katalin’s life has no easy words, but it’s a story about unconditional belief in an idea that can change the world.
Kariko Katalin, a woman who has been ridiculed, stopped many times, often fired, her resume is full of failures and heartache. But today, she is considered one of the inventors mRNA technology , thereby creating the most advanced Covid-19 vaccine in the world.
Kariko Katalin. Photo: Euronews What is mRNA technology? Vaccines with mRNA technology are Covid-19 vaccine most awaited. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pioneered and quickly approved this vaccine. Compared with traditional technology, mRNA promises to be more effective, faster, safer, with fewer side effects; can compare the difference like a motorbike and a jet. The concept of mRNA was learned in 9th grade, biology lectures taught that mRNA has the function of conveying information that regulates the structure of proteins. Letter m = messenger = information. To make it easy to understand, the process of synthesizing each protein in the human body is like solving a complex math problem, mRNA becomes a manual of mathematical formulas. If humans can create a vaccine in the form of artificial mRNA, when injected into the body, the mRNA will disguise itself as a “thief” that sneaks in but does not wake up the “host”, it silently builds a defense system. are antibody proteins, so that when the virus attacks, it will be destroyed by that system. mRNA urges, haunts Kariko Katalin Kariko Katalin is obsessed with mRNA, she understands this is a very special type of RNA that holds all the secrets to creating billions of billions of proteins in the human body. Theoretically, science can completely manipulate mRNA to create a targeted protein, doing that, mRNA becomes the most powerful weapon to control a variety of diseases. But that’s just a theory. Understanding of mRNA in the 1980s was still very limited. In principle, when injecting mRNA into the human body, it is an allergen, so the body’s defense system will immediately destroy it before the mRNA can perform its functions. That is, the mRNA vaccine, no matter how cleverly disguised, is still a “thief”. But what is more serious, is that the human body’s instinctive resistance to the “thief” is too strong, creating a severe immune response that is potentially fatal. After a lot of failures, most scientists gave up, no one cares about mRNA anymore, that knowledge is scattered on the pages of 9th and 10th grade biology textbooks, so that students can take exams with these questions. boring question. Kariko Katalin was undaunted and continued to dive into research. All efforts paid off when Katalin’s work attracted the attention of two young companies Moderna (Canada) and BioNTech (Germany), after which the giant Pfizer (USA) decided to invest in the production of Covid vaccines. -19 by mRNA technology. That is like winning a ticket to Mars. mRNA technology will not stop at vaccine production, but in the not too distant future, a series of “diseases” such as cancer, stroke, or other dangerous diseases also promise to be “cleared”. The floating life of Kariko Katalin Kariko Katalin was born on January 17, 1955 in Szolnok (Hungary), in a cottage without amenities, but full of love for a family home. Kariko Katalin inherited a gene for biology from her father, a pork salesman, a gene for research perseverance from her mother, an accountant, and was inspired by her passion for biology from the teachers at the school she attended. study. Due to poverty, Kariko Katalin devoted herself to her university years, winning a scholarship to the People’s Republic of Hungary, the most prestigious scholarship at that time. Katalin went on to study for a doctorate, then worked at the biological research center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged. Kariko Katalin pursues mRNA technology. It is an area that requires a lot of investment. Hungary in the 1980s was the most liberal and open country in the former Soviet bloc, but it also didn’t have the money to fund major research. Kariko Katalin lost her job at the age of 30. She initially looked for a job in the European Union, but nowhere would accept it, because Katalin had no significant scientific achievements. One afternoon in 1985, Kariko Katalin and her husband took their 2-year-old daughter out of Hungary to find her way to America. The only asset of any value is the old car, which sold for £900 on the black market. To make it through, Kariko Katalin had to cut open her daughter’s toy teddy bear, insert £900, and then sew it back up. Initially in the US, Kariko Katalin was accepted to work at Temple University, but soon her group was disbanded because of lack of funding. In 1989, Kariko Katalin joined the faculty of pharmacy at the University of Pennsylvania. Although she is a full professor, this is the most difficult time, the salary is very low and no one believes her. Things took a turn for the worse in 1995, Kariko couldn’t get funding, couldn’t find a project, and the University of Pennsylvania decided to fire her. It was a horrible time. The room Kariko Katalin lived in was leaking in every evening rain. She has just been diagnosed with cancer while her husband is in Hungary and cannot come to the US because of visa problems. How much time and dedication work seems to be slipping out of hand. “I started to suspect that maybe I wasn’t good, I wasn’t smart. I try to tell myself that everything is here, I just need to do better experiments,” said Kariko Katalin. Turning point In 1998, Kariko Katalin finally received the first $100,000 grant. Strangely enough, that year she also met a man of her life. It was that fateful afternoon, Kariko Katalin went to photocopy documents, she met Drew Weissmen, a colleague who had just moved from the National Institutes of Health. In the meantime, Kariko Katalin told Weissmen about the idea of creating mRNA. Immediately Weissmen saw before his eyes a priceless fortune. Weissmen decided to invest, collaborate with Kariko Katalin, determined to develop mRNA technology in the field of biomedicine. In 2005, the attenuated version of mRNA was released. After reading the study, Derrick Rossi, a Canadian stem cell expert who is doing a PhD student at Stanford University, was amazed. The time has come. Realizing a super profitable business opportunity, Rossi quietly sought investment capital, he founded a small company, named Moderna. In Germany, a new research team also discovered the potential of Kariko Katalin, a new company BioNTech was founded, based in the US. In 2013, BioNTech hired Karko Katalin as a senior mRNA specialist. Moderna and BioNTech did not do much until 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, Moderna promoted the production of vaccines by mRNA technology, adding the company BioNTech invested by Pfizer billions of dollars determined to turn their ideas into Kariko Katalin come true.
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