The journey of Katalin Karikó, from facing demotion at work, rejection of grants, patent dispute, financial struggle to being Times 2021 most influential people of the year and winning 2023 #NobelPrize in medicine along with Drew Weissman is historic
🧵 on mRNA vaccine evolution
🧵 on mRNA vaccine evolution
Traditional vaccines use killed or weakened virus to develop immunity. Their development is resource intensive and takes long time, involves large scale cell culture, antigen isolation, further modification stages.
The crux is traditional vaccines can not be developed rapidly.
The crux is traditional vaccines can not be developed rapidly.
Hence, the need for vaccine that can be developed rapidly gave rise to mRNA vaccines. These can be designed swiftly, are cheaper, can be manufactured faster and can be really helpful during pandemic outbreak like Covid-19.
mRNA working mechanism 👇
mRNA working mechanism 👇
Research on mRNA vaccines have been in progress since 1980s but it was Karikó and Weissman who noticed that if bases of mRNA are modified than the dendritic cells (that recognize foreign antigens) do not recognize injected mRNA as foreign and hence no inflammatory response.
Had Kariko gone cranky because of hardship in her earlier struggling days there might have been far more deaths due to Covid.
Where other scientists saw dead end, Karikó and Weissman saw hope.
Salute to their work and indeed, research is nothing but a blind date with knowledge
Where other scientists saw dead end, Karikó and Weissman saw hope.
Salute to their work and indeed, research is nothing but a blind date with knowledge
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