Okay. 2013, 10 years ago, finally, neurosurgery had enough, that I never get any money. Because the space I occupied, although it's a tiny lab, but anyway. I never complain again, no blame to the chairman that throw my stuff out to the hallway because I really did not get the money. Why can you expect a neurosurgeon to judge that what I'm doing is important? When recently I met him, Sean Grady, he told me that, "Guess what? I am giving a lecture about you." I said, "About me? What are you talking about?" "How did we miss it? Somebody here in the neurosurgery department doing so important thing and we just kick her out." But I– no harsh feeling. Why a neurosurgeon would know that this messenger RNA thing is important when the NIH kicking me, my grants out? They're the experts and they would think it is not good then how he would know. No hard feeling.

Anyway, I thought also that it– I love to be at Penn, but, I also felt that, "Okay, 2013, a lot of things happened." In 2013 in spring, Moderna get $240 million from AstraZeneca. I said, "Now, the messenger RNA is ready for a primetime." I thought that we need formulations, so my first goal was to maybe go to a formulation company first, but they didn't see me that they need that much. Then I was also interviewing Moderna and other companies. Anyway, I went from the rowing venue from Switzerland, first we stop at CureVac. I said, "I will be here if I can work on modified RNA." They thought that they don't need modified RNA.

Next day we drove up with my sister, my husband, and we stopped by at Mainz. I gave a lecture who offered me that I can be a vice president in BioNTech. It was just on a campus company. It was a very small one. I said, "I will be here if I can work on nucleoside-modified RNA." He said, "Okay." Then I moved there. Yes. It was not easy because nobody rented apartments. Finally, BioNTech found attic place that woman clothes was still there. In three months, I went to work that I dressed from my luggage. Christmas, I came back. I told my husband, that's probably is enough. We have a house here. It's just too much hassle. But, he sent me back, "Try harder. You work all your life and I don't want to hear that." So I went back and then nine more years I was there. [laughs]

Dr. Katalin Kariko is a biochemist and adjunct professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania. She won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work in developing mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. She completed her schooling at the University of Szeged and carried out her post-doctoral work at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Centre of Hungary.

Dr. Kariko received her Bachelor of Sciences in Biology in 1978 and her PhD in Biochemistry in 1982 from the University of Szeged. She completed her post-doctoral work at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Centre of Hungary until 1985, when her lab at the Biological Research Centre lost funding. She then moved to the United States and carried out post-doctoral work at Temple University from 1981 to 1988 and at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences from 1988 to 1989. She then joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in the Perelman School of Medicine’s neurosurgery department in 1989.

At the University of Pennsylvania, she began to collaborate with immunologist Drew Weissman, where the two experimented with modifying mRNA. In the early 2000’s, Kariko and Weissman discovered that swapping uridine with pseudouridine in mRNA created a molecule with favorable attributes such as reduced adverse reactions. This breakthrough led the way for many other modified mRNA molecules to be potentially used in a multitude of future medical applications, including developing effective mRNA vaccines against the COVID-19 virus during the height of the pandemic in 2020. For their development of mRNA biotechnology, Dr. Kariko and Dr. Weissman were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Outside of the Nobel Prize, Dr. Kariko has received numerous awards for her contributions to science including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 2021, the Novo Nordisk Prize in 2022, being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2023, the Harvey Prize in Human Health in 2024, and elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2025.