Princess of Asturias Award: Hungarian Recipient

Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó and her fellow researchers Drew Weissman, Philip Felgner, Uğur Şahin, Özlem Türeci, Derrick Rossi and Sarah Gilbert are to receive this year's Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research for their achievements in developing a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a statement by the Foundation, Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman, Philip Felgner, Uğur Şahin, Özlem Türeci, Derrick Rossi and Sarah Gilbert have independently contributed to the development of some of the vaccines approved to date, all based on different strategies, but which have protein S as a common target. This protein is present on the surface of the virus and facilitates its attachment to and entry into cells. Philip Felgner is a pioneer in the use of protein microarrays to understand in detail how the immune system responds to different infectious microorganisms and to identify the best antigens for use in vaccines and diagnostic tests. Moreover, in 1985 he discovered and developed lipofection technology, a strategy that consists in introducing genetic material into a liposome so that it can be delivered to and introduced into cells. This technology is present in lipid nanoparticles that serve as delivery vehicles for messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines against COVID-19. On the other hand, Katalin Karikó, a pioneer in the study of the therapeutic possibilities of this molecule, is considered the ‘mother’ of this type of vaccine. Together with immunologist Drew Weissman, she began working on mRNA-based vaccines and saw that this molecule caused strong inflammatory reactions because the immune system detected it as an intruder. Both managed to introduce small changes in the structure of the RNA so that these reactions did not take place. This breakthrough laid the foundation for the use of RNA therapies and its results allowed Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci (BioNTech) and Derrick Rossi (Moderna) to develop the mRNA-based vaccines that have currently been approved against COVID-19 and whose use can be extended to different areas of medicine such as cancer, autoimmune diseases and tissue regeneration. Finally, vaccinologist Sarah Gilbert is another of the researchers who have worked to obtain a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine she developed, Oxford/AstraZeneca, is another of those approved by European authorities to date and is based on an adenovirus that is used as a vector to introduce the DNA encoding protein S into cells, thus stimulating the immune response.

Katalin Karikó was born in Szolnok (Hungary) on January 17, 1955. She graduated with a degree in Biology from the University of Szeged (Hungary) in 1978 and subsequently earned her PhD in Biochemistry from the same university. In 1985, she moved to Temple University (Philadelphia, USA) to serve as a postdoctoral fellow, continuing research work there into the therapeutic possibilities of RNA, as mentioned above. In 2013, she joined BioNTech, where she currently holds the position of Senior Vice President, and in 2015 discovered that coating RNA molecules with lipid particles was a good strategy for their delivery and protection. Her work has given rise to more than 180 articles, several patents, 13 747 citations and an h-index of 74, according to Google Scholar. She was joint recipient of the 2020 Rosenstiel Award (USA), together with Drew Weissman, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Szeged in January 2021.