Katalin Karikó Awarded by the Cancer Research Institute

Cancer Research Institute (CRI), a nonprofit organization dedicated to harnessing the immune system’s power to control and potentially cure all types of cancer, will confer its prestigious William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Immunology on four key scientists, including Hungarian researcher Dr. Katalin Karikó, credited with the discovery and development of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines against COVID-19. 

CRI's website says the institute will present the 2021 Coley Awards to Katalin Karikó, Ph.D., of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and BioNTech, and Drew Weissman, M.D., Ph.D., of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania along with BioNTech co-founders Ugur Sahin, M.D., Ph.D., and Özlem Türeci, M.D., Ph.D., during a virtual ceremony to take place on November 10.

During the Cancer Research Institute annual awards ceremony, Drs. Karikó, Sahin, Türeci, and Weissman will take part in an historic joint interview moderated by TIME science and medicine writer Alice Park. “Many attendees likely will be surprised to learn that the mRNA technology that changed lives during the current COVID-19 pandemic originated years ago in research intended to combat cancer,” said Jill O’Donnell-Tormey, Ph.D., chief executive officer and director of scientific affairs at CRI, explaining the organization’s award decision. “And just as importantly for millions of patients, mRNA will play a big role in cancer treatment going forward.”

Coley Award recipients Karikó and Weissman carried out essential discovery research on mRNA beginning in the 1990s, which eventually determined that mRNA could be modified and then safely reintroduced into the human body to produce an immune response. Coley Award recipients Sahin and Türeci, whose own research on the therapeutic prospects of mRNA against cancer led to their co-founding of BioNTech, partnered the German biotechnology firm with U.S. drug giant Pfizer to develop and produce the first FDA-approved vaccine against COVID-19, CRI explains on its website.