Dr. Katalin “Kati” Kariko, 69, grew up in an adobe home off a dirt road in a small town in Hungary called Kisujszallas, without running water, a refrigerator or a television set. She wore no shoes in the summertime. 

“It was a simple life,” Kariko said last week. “We had no trash because we ate eggs from our hens and vegetables from our garden. So we had no packaging and hardly went to the store. We made our own soap. We had no cows, but a neighbor did.”

What are the odds that a woman of such humble origins would become one of the world's premier scientists, winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine? Kariko, of Rydal, and her University of Pennsylvania colleague Dr. Drew Weissman won the award for their role in the development of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines that arguably saved millions of lives around the world. 

Kariko, a biochemist who will receive the Wistar Institute Helen Dean King Award on Tuesday, Oct. 8, believed that someday mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) would transform ordinary cells into tiny factories capable of producing their own medicines on demand, and 30 years of laboratory research proved her to be correct. Messenger RNA molecules carry the genetic information needed to make proteins.

This pioneering work by Kariko and later, Weissman, revolutionized medical practitioners'  understanding of how mRNA interacts with the immune system, contributing to the unprecedented speed of vaccine development during the COVID pandemic. 

Kariko and Weissman’s medical findings are currently being used in more than 250 clinical trials using mRNA for possible vaccines for a host of other diseases including monkeypox, HIV-AIDS, influenza, tuberculosis, Lyme disease and cystic fibrosis. Ongoing gene therapy trials also are using their mRNA discoveries for cancer treatment and inherited diseases.  

The lives of nonhuman creatures may be impacted as well. “In Houston,” she told the Local, “they injected the first elephant with an mRNA vaccine, and 50 horses. A deadly disease has been killing elephants in zoos. And it will be used for other zoo animals, too.”

Kariko, who moved to Rydal in 1989, is remarkably self-effacing, even though she has received more than 130 international awards and honors for her pioneering research. 

“I am no different from you,” insisted Kariko, who essentially toiled in obscurity in laboratories for decades. “In fact, I never had a really good memory. I had classmates with much better memory, but I was hardworking and resilient. I just did my job. If you are dedicated to your work, then you are no different than I am. 

“If it was not for the pandemic, nobody would know I existed,” she continued. “Young people could not name one scientist alive today in the world. People take medicine to save their lives, but they have no idea who created those life-saving medicines. Wouldn't it be more important to read about those scientists than about Kim Kardashian?”

In 1985, Kariko's lab in Communist Hungary lost its funding, most likely because of politics, and Kariko sought work at institutions in other countries. After being offered a $17,000-a-year research position by Dr. Robert Suhadolnik at Temple University Medical School's biochemistry department, Kariko came to Philadelphia with her husband, engineer Bela Francia, mother Zsuzsanna and two-year-old daughter, Susan. The family arrived with only $1,200, which was sewn into Susan’s teddy bear.

Between 1985 and 1988, Kariko served as a postdoctoral fellow at Temple University and participated in what is now considered a groundbreaking clinical trial with patients diagnosed with AIDS, hematologic diseases and chronic fatigue syndrome. During the arduous research process, she battled cockroaches in a windowless lab and faced occasional threats of deportation. 

In 1988, Kariko accepted a job at Johns Hopkins University, leading to a nasty rift with Suhadolnik, as recounted in Gregory Zuckerman's 2021 book, “A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine.”

But Kariko told The Local last week, “I liked Dr. Suhadolnik and learned a lot from him. I prefer to emphasize the positive and not hold a grudge against anyone who may have made my life a bit more difficult. He was responsible for bringing me to the U.S., so I am very grateful for that.”

Kariko was hired by the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 to do an independent investigation. “But I could not get grants, and I was demoted,” she told us, “although I was told I did not have to leave Penn. 'You just have to come up with the best experiments,' I was told. I never won any prizes for years, and I was OK with that. I have my own goals as to what I can achieve. Nobody should be working for awards. It can be divisive. People can get jealous.” Kariko has now received so many honors, it would take a separate article to list them all, and Penn has been enriched by licensing revenue from the scientific discoveries.

When asked why she agreed to an interview with a small weekly newspaper in Northwest Philadelphia after achieving worldwide fame, Kariko replied, “In Hungary, I did an interview for a publication for field workers. I preferred that to my interview with the New York Times. I have been on the bottom. Everyone is important. I want people to think if she can do it, I can do it.”

In addition to her work at Penn, Kariko is a professor at the University of Szeged in Hungary, her alma mater, to which she gave $500,000 of her Nobel Prize winnings. Her daughter, Susan Francia, is in the Abington High School Hall of Fame, having won gold medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Olympics as part of the U.S. Women's eight-women rowing crews.

Kariko's autobiography, “Breaking Through: My Life in Science,” was published by Crown Publishing Group late last year, just days after the scientist won the Nobel Prize. The book, which was dedicated to many of Kariko’s former teachers and has been translated into nine languages, became the best-selling non-fiction book in Hungary in 2023. The autobiography was awarded the Libri Literary Prize in June. “I worked on the book for more than a year,” Kariko said, “but I don't have sophisticated English. My daughter helped and an agency that she put me in touch with.” 

Dr. Kariko will be speaking at Wistar Institute, 3601 Spruce St., at noon, Tuesday, Oct. 8, when she will receive the institution’s Helen Dean King Award. More details at wistar.org. You can reach Len Lear at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com