Nobel Saviors Of The Pandemic

NOBEL SAVIORS OF THE PANDEMIC

The biggest medical invention of our time has to be mRNA vaccine technology. The story behind this technology is inspiring indeed. Little known Scientist Katalin Kariko, an immigrant from Hungary came up with this idea to use synthetic mRNA to instruct the body cells to become a factory to whatever protein you wanted it to produce was mocked.

Like all worthy beings who stand out from the herd, she was ignored and her idea was turned down. Scientist Kariko found no support in her initial years and landed a low-level position as research assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. As years passed by, she was further demoted from her position and was then diagnosed with Cancer. Unlike other scientists she never cared about patent or how to make money out of new discovery. She found support in only few like Dr. David Langer who believed in her research and work. Immunologist Dr. Drew Weissman, who was working on an HIV vaccine collaborated with her and got her research finally published but it got little attention. People were not interested in mRNA. Leading scientific journals rejected her work. Undeterred by the lack of response, Weissman and Kariko persisted with their research and achieved a major breakthrough, allowing synthetic RNA to bypass the body’s immune system.

Their work caught the attention of two men, Canadian stem cell biologist Derrick Rossi and Professor Robert Langer, who later helped found Moderna and Pfizer’s future partner, BioNTech. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna used these techniques to develop the coronavirus vaccine. Thanks to Scientist Kariko and Dr. Drew Weissman, this breakthrough technology holds enormous potential saving lives not only for this pandemic but also giving hope for vaccines for HIV, Cancer, influenza and malaria.

It won’t be of any surprise if Scientist Kariko and Dr. Weissman get a Nobel Prize for their breakthrough research despite all odds.

Written by
Suresh Iyer

 

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