About me

Adjunct Professor of Neurosurgery

Katalin Karikó, PhD, is a biochemist and researcher, best known for her contributions to mRNA technology and the COVID-19 vaccines. Karikó and Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, were jointly awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries that enabled the modified mRNA technology used in Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s vaccines to prevent COVID-19 infection.

More than 15 years ago at Penn Medicine, Karikó and Weissman found a way to modify mRNA and later developed a delivery technique to package the mRNA in lipid nanoparticles. This made it possible for mRNA to reach the proper part of the body and trigger an immune response to fight disease.

These laboratory breakthroughs made mRNA safe, effective, and practical for use as a vaccine against COVID. The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine received FDA approval in August 2021, and the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine has been authorized by the FDA for emergency use.

Karikó is a senior vice president at BioNTech and an adjunct professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and began collaborating with Weissman in 1997.

Karikó received her bachelor's degree in biology in 1978 and her doctorate in biochemistry in 1982 from the University of Szeged in her native Hungary. She was working at the Biological Research Center of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Szeged before immigrating to the United States in 1985.

My Locations

My research

Krienke, C, Kolb, L, Diken, E, Streuber, M, Kirchhoff, S, Bukur, T, Akilli-Öztürk, Ö, Kranz, LM, Berger, H, Petschenka, J, Diken, M, Kreiter, S, Yogev, N, Waisman, A, Karikó, K, Türeci, Ö, and Sahin, U A noninflammatory mRNA vaccine for treatment of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis , Science, 371(6525): 2021,145-153

Hotz, C, Wagenaar, TR, Gieseke, F, Bangari, DS, Callahan, M, Cao, H, Diekmann, J, Diken, M, Grunwitz, C, Hebert, A, Hsu, K, Bernardo, M, Karikó, K, Kreiter, S, Kuhn, AN, Levit, M, Malkova, N, Masciari, S, Pollard, J, Qu, H, Ryan, S, Selmi, A, Schlereth, J, Singh, K, Sun, F, Tillmann, B, Tolstykh, T, Weber, W, Wicke, L, Witzel, S, Yu, Q, Zhang, YA, Zheng, G, Lager, J, Nabel, GJ, Sahin, U, and Wiederschain, D Local delivery of mRNA-encoding cytokines promotes antitumor immunity and tumor eradication across multiple preclinical tumor models , Science Translational Medicine, 13(610): 2021,eabc7804

Sahin, U, Muik, A, Derhovanessian, E, Vogler, I, Kranz, LM, Vormehr, M, Baum, A, Pascal, K, Quandt, J, Maurus, D, Brachtendorf, S, Lorks, V, Sikorski, J, Hilker, R, Becker, D, Eller, AK, Grutzner, J, Boesler, C, Rosenbaum, C, Kuhnle, MC, Luxemburger, U, Kemmer-Bruck, A, Langer, D, Bexon, M, Bolte, S, Karikó, K, Palanche, T, Fischer, B, Schultz, A, Shi, PY, Fontes-Garfias, C, Perez, JL, Swanson, KA, Loschko, J, Scully, IL, Cutler, M, Kalina, W, Kyratsous, CA, Cooper, D, Dormitzer, PR, Jansen, KU, and Tureci, O. COVID-19 vaccine BNT162b1 elicits human antibody and TH1 T cell responses , Nature , 586(7830): 2020,594-599

Karikó, K., Muramatsu, H., Welsh, FA., Ludwig, J., Kato, H., Akira, S., Weissman, D. Incorporation of pseudouridine into mRNA yields superior nonimmunogenic vector with increased translational capacity and biological stability , Molecular Therapy, 16: 2008,1833-1840

Karikó K, Buckstein M, Ni H, Weissman D. Suppression of RNA recognition by Toll-like receptors: the impact of nucleoside modification and the evolutionary origin of RNA , Immunity, 23(2): 2005,165-75