Together with her fellow researcher, Drew Weissman, Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó also received the award of the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM), which was presented at a virtual event late Tuesday night Hungarian time.
According to the announcement of the University of Szeged reporting on the recognition, at the virtual event entitled Innovators in health care, in addition to Katalin Karikó, seven researchers, health professionals and organizations received this year's recognition from NYAM who helped to understand and deal with the devastating effects of the coronavirus epidemic. Those who have achieved breakthroughs have brought innovation that will change medicine and healing, opening up new opportunities to build a healthier world.
NYAM honors Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman for their outstanding work in the field of biomedical sciences.
According to the tribute on the organization's website, Katalin Karikó's research has focused on mechanisms mediated by RNA for four decades. The ultimate goal of his work is to develop a transcriptional mRNA that can also be used in humans for protein therapy. He investigated RNA-mediated immune activation and discovered that nucleoside modifications suppress RNA immunogenicity. This pioneering work opened the door to the therapeutic use of mRNA.
He and his colleagues filed thirteen patents in the United States for the use of non-immunogenic RNA. He was the co-founder and CEO of RNARx, a company developing nucleoside-modified mRNA for therapeutic purposes. His patented process, which he co-created with Drew Weissman, of nucleoside-modified uridines found in mRNA, is also used by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna to create their mRNA-based vaccine.
Source: MTI
