Karik\u00f3 introduced herself to the \u201ccopier-hogging immunologist,\u201d Drew Weismann, and asked about his work. He planned to create vaccines against infectious diseases and discussed ways to deliver an antigen into cells to trigger the body\u2019s own immune response. At once, Karik\u00f3 saw another prospective role for her pet molecule and a long-standing collaboration was born that laid a strong foundation for the mRNA-based vaccines that proved vital during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Breaking Through,<\/em> Karik\u00f3’s page-turning memoir, the talented and tenacious researcher recounts the origins and evolution of her scientific journey.<\/h3>\r\n

Karik\u00f3 grew up in a small town in Hungary, the daughter of a skilled butcher. There, a high school biology teacher introduced her to a book\u2014endocrinologist Hans Selye\u2019s The Stress of Life<\/em>\u2014 that would resonate with her both as an introduction to scientific thinking and as a guidebook to living well. Nature \u201crarely replies to questions unless they are put to her in the form of experiments to which she can say yes or no,\u201d wrote Selye in that book in 1956.<\/h3>\r\n

Selye\u2019s observations helped Karik\u00f3 realized she wanted to spend her life designing experiments that would contribute to human knowledge, and her parents encouraged her to become a \u201ckutat\u00f3\u201d\u2014 Hungarian for \u201csearcher\u201d\u2014 or in English, a researcher.<\/h3>\r\n

She earned her PhD from the prestigious Biological Research Center at Szeged in Hungary, where she began her exploratory research on medicinal applications for RNA until her funding was pulled. When she found a postdoctoral position in Philadelphia, she moved to the United States with her husband and toddler Susan with the family\u2019s meagre savings sewn into the little girl\u2019s teddy bear.<\/h3>\r\n

\u201cDo not blame,\u201d wrote Seyle. \u201cFocus on what you can control. Transform bad stress into good stress.\u201d This advice would serve Karik\u00f3 well over the course of her nearly four decade long academic career, a period, she writes, in which she was belittled, ignored when her research did not win government grants or any private funding.<\/h3>\r\n

Still, nothing upset her as much as one early lab finding: synthetic mRNA triggered an inflammatory immune response in cells. An mRNA vaccine might still have been possible, Karik\u00f3 and Weismann reasoned, but mRNA would be useless as therapeutic medicine until they figured out a way to keep it from activating the immune system.<\/h4>\r\n

In 2005, when the pair reported that a modified mRNA produced a non-inflammatory immune response in cells, their landmark finding, which would eventually be licensed by two biotech companies, went unheralded. Meanwhile, in a rude reminder that lab space is often allocated based on the funding a researcher brings in, Karik\u00f3 was moved to a tiny room which, she writes, was not conducive for working with mRNA. It was the last straw.<\/h3>\r\n

In 2013, Karik\u00f3 received job offers from the two companies that had licensed the modified mRNA technology\u2014 BioNTech in Germany and Moderna in the United States. When she packed her bags and left temporarily for Germany, her husband and their daughter Susan \u2014the latter of whom was now a two-time Olympic gold medalist\u2014 stayed behind.<\/h3>\r\n

Karik\u00f3 compares her science with her daughter\u2019s rowing. The crew rows backward, she observes, without a view of the finish line. As she has done in the lab, they must trust that if they give it their all, their hard work will bring them to the right destination. \u00a0<\/h3>\r\n

Karik\u00f3\u2019s discovery found a meaningful application during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the story of the synthetic mRNA technology will not end here. Scientists are studying its therapeutic potential for various cancers, cystic fibrosis, and rare metabolic disorders, as well as for vaccines against other infectious diseases, Karik\u00f3 writes. In the next decade, she predicts, there will be an explosion of new mRNA therapies and vaccines. Her moving memoir offers a fascinating glimpse into the dead ends and hard work that led up to this important discovery while highlighting critical shortcomings in the scientific reward system.<\/h3>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  One day in 1997, University of Pennsylvania molecular biologist Katalin (Kati) Karik\u00f3 met a new hire at the photocopier who would change the trajectory of her research forever. At 42, the scientist had made little headway with her big idea that mRNA\u2014the ephemeral molecule that instructs cells to make proteins\u2014could be commandeered to help 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