Medical Science Researcher
Persistence personified: She was denied academic tenure but later won a Nobel prize for her medical research.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Katalin Kariko (“KK”) was born In Hungary. Her father was a butcher who had completed the equivalent of sixth grade. Her mother was a bookkeeper with the same level of formal education as her father.
CHILDHOOD
As a child growing up in communist Hungary, the family’s modest home had no running water, no refrigerator and was heated by burning sawdust left over from a nearby toy factory. Needless to say, the Kariko family had no television or internet.
Looking back later from her adult perspective, KK often sensed that she was an outlier in the ‘clubby’ world of medicine, whose leaders were often men whose fathers had been physicians before them. She recalled once traveling to a stroke center in Buffalo, New York state, to perform an experiment involving the brains of rabbits – telling her professional scientist counterpart in Buffalo that the experiment reminded her of her father’s profession – which she didn’t mention specifically as a butcher of animals. Her counterpart replied, “No kidding! My father is also a neurosurgeon, and my grandfather, too!”
Obviously, the fellow scientist assumed that KK’s father had been a neurosurgeon, not an animal butcher. But KK laughed, explaining that her upbringing was very different.
EDUCATION
KK excelled in science courses during her primary education, earning third place in Hungary in a biology competition. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology and her Ph.D. in biochemistry, both from a university (Szeged) in Hungary. She continued her postdoctoral research at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Center of Hungary.
In 1985, the laboratory where KK was working lost its financial support, so KK sought work at scientific research institutions in other countries. When offered a research position at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, KK left Hungary for the U.S. with her husband and two-year-old daughter. Smuggled (illegally) inside her daughter’s toy teddy bear, was the money KK and her husband had received from selling their car.
BIOLOGY RESEARCH PERSISTENCE EVENTUALLY ACHIEVES RESPECT
After working for awhile at a Temple University lab and later transferring to a hospital in Maryland, KK applied to the University of Pennsylvania as a lab assistant. After forwarding her application but receiving no response, KK called the secretary to the professor who had posted the ‘Help Wanted’ ad. The secretary told KK that her boss believed he had not found the right person to fill the vacancy in his lab and planned to readvertise the position as still available. KK asked the secretary to ask her boss to please review her application and professional resume again.
Following the second review, KK was hired and eventually collaborated with a scientist whose lab was devoted to gene therapy. Together they studied RNA in cardiovascular cells, seeking to harness the power of RNA’s more stable gene ‘cousin,’ DNA.
RNA is a temporary copy of DNA that degrades easily, and most academics dismissed KK’s idea of using it to treat disease. Her idea was “completely heretical at the time,” said a fellow scientist.
When her original collaborator left the academic world for a job in industry, KK found another supporter, then a resident in Penn’s neurosurgery department. The pair continued to study ‘mRNA’ in the brain. Two professional colleagues noted that KK was not naïve about the importance of attracting grant money within the world of academics, but she persisted with the study even though at the time, it was not attracting any grant money because the ‘conventional wisdom” within the world of science research at the time, was that using mRNA to fight disease was an unattainable goal.
Even after KK and her colleague published the first of several studies showing how mRNA could be used in a vaccine, Penn rebuffed her several times as she sought a tenured position to provide her with a secure employment status. KK was told that “I was not of faculty quality” – quoting a conversation with an unidentified administrator at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.
Editor: As noted by the staff writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Penn’s handling of KK’s academic status illustrates the competitive, constantly churning treadmill of academic science, where success is often defined by grant money received and the publication of studies in scientific journals – neither of which occurs without the other. Scientists can’t conduct their experiments without money for chemicals, lab animals and other supplies, yet in order to secure that funding, they have to provide the results of experiments, which requires money. The result is that many successful scientists learn to practice what is called ‘grantsmanship’ namely publishing safe, incremental advances to keep the funds coming (to their university or private lab employer).”
KK chafed under that system, instead aiming for a high-risk target – using mRNA to fight disease.
CHALLENGE – SCHMOOZING PEOPLE PRIORITIZED OVER PURSUING PURE SCIENCE
KK persevered with her scientific research ideas for more than two decades, finding a home in the labs of a few sympathetic colleagues who could spare the funds. As KK noted, “I was learning that succeeding at a research institution like Penn required skills that had little to do with science. You needed to know how to do things in which I have never had any interest: flattering people, schmoozing, being agreeable when you disagree, even when you are 100% certain that you are correct.”
KK was confident that the transient nature of mRNA, long seen by others as a flaw, would be a plus when used in a vaccine. They and others figured out how to deliver the delicate genetic molecules inside human cells by encapsulating them in millions of oily droplets, called lipid nanoparticles. Once there, the mRNA served as a temporary blueprint, enabling the recipient’s cells to make a useful protein without any permanent changes to the person’s genetic makeup. That’s how Covid vaccines work: the mRNA carries the recipe for a spike-like protein on the surface of the coronavirus, giving the recipient a safe sneak preview of the virus so the immune system can prepare to fight the real thing.
Frustrated, KK finally left Penn to join a German start-up company, which would one day collaborate with Pfizer to make the first Covid vaccine.
CAREER SATISFACTION
A colleague, now the chair of neurosurgery at a New York City hospital said it took a pandemic for others – both at Penn and beyond – to realize that KK’s ideas had merit. “Of course, hindsight is 20 / 20 and Penn should have promoted KK with tenure.”
In 2023, KK and her Penn colleague, Drew Weissman, were announced as Nobel Prize winners for their medical research, which paved the way for the Covid-19 vaccines that are credited with saving literally millions of lives.
Ironically but not coincidentally, Penn has reaped more than $1 billion in royalties from licensing patents it took out on the discoveries of KK and Weissman.
While not a result intended by KK, for Penn’s declining to recognize the quality of KK’s scientific efforts, Penn – and presumably other academic research institutions – will likely be considering granting tenure to the next generation of scientists, without consistently prioritizing their ability to generate full, outside funding for their research.
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This career story is based on several sources including a new article written by Tom Avril, published by The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper on October 8, 2023 plus internet research including Wikipedia.
