Researcher Demoted By University Of Pennsylvania Wins Nobel Prize For mRNA Discoveries—And Some Academics Urge Penn To Apologize

Topline

Katalin Karikó won this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine alongside Drew Weissman for their research that led to the development of mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, but a post from the University of Pennsylvania—where Karikó was demoted from tenure track in 1995—claiming her as a Penn researcher angered the medical community.

Karikó and Weissman’s research laid the foundation for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 … [+] vaccines. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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Key Facts

Karikó and Weissman were announced as the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winners for their discoveries that “fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system” and “enabled the development of effective mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.”

Karikó was hired by the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 as an adjunct professor and researcher, where she met and began collaborating with Weissman, a professor of medicine at Penn, in 1997.

Though initially on track to become a tenured professor, the university reportedly offered Karikó a choice to either leave or be demoted with a pay cut in 1995—which she said was “particularly horrible” because she had just been diagnosed with cancer and her husband was stuck in Hungary because of a visa issue—because her mRNA research was deemed too risky and did not attract enough grant funding.

Karikó took the demotion and continued her work, but later left her senior research investigator position at Penn (where she retains an adjunct professorship) in 2013 to serve as vice president at BioNTech—co-manufacturer of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine—because Penn refused to reinstate her to a tenure track position, reportedly considering her research “not of faculty quality.”

Penn congratulated Karikó and Weissman for their Nobel Prize win on Monday in an X post, calling them “Penn’s historic mRNA vaccine research team” and attaching a university news release (which does not acknowledge Karikó’s tense history with Penn)—but a community note applied to the post calls the wording “misleading” because she left the university as a researcher a decade ago.

Chief Critics

Members of the medical and academic communities criticized Penn in response to the university’s post. Eric Feigl-Ding, chief of Covid Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute and former Harvard Medical School researcher, urged Penn to apologize to Karikó but praised her for persisting in her research despite being demoted. Nicole Paulk, founder of Siren Biotechnology, criticized Penn Medicine for its post congratulating Karikó, stating: “You shunned her and put roadblocks in the way of her and her research when she was at Penn. You should feel immense shame, not pride, today. You played no role in this.” Some critics suggested Karikó’s experience is an example of the struggles women in academia face. “A woman winning the Nobel prize for the same work Penn called ‘not faculty quality’ & Penn CLAIMING CREDIT is exactly how misogyny in academia works,” Stevenson University assistant professor Kerry Pray posted. Other critics accused Penn and other research institutions of valuing profit over quality research. Martin Bauer, associate professor of physics at Durham University, criticized Penn for its “self-adulation over a Nobel prize but no recognition of the way they treated the ‘historic research team’ when it didn’t seem profitable enough.”

Key Background

Karikó and Weissman reportedly met in 1997 because they kept “fighting over a photocopy machine,” prompting them to talk and compare what they were working on. Weissman reportedly had the funding to finance their mRNA experiments, which Karikó said kept her going. Karikó, who long struggled to secure grant funding, reportedly never earned more than $60,000 a year while at Penn. After nearly a decade of partnership, Karikó and Weissman published findings in 2005 that showed how a modified version of mRNA could be administered without triggering an aggressive immune response, leading them to realize mRNA could potentially be used in vaccines. Their research initially attracted little interest, and they founded a startup but struggled to find investors. They eventually licensed their technology to BioNTech, then a little-known company, where Karikó moved in 2013 after realizing she would not make progress with mRNA research while still at Penn. Their findings became the foundation for both the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines. Karikó and Weissman have won numerous other accolades for their mRNA research, like the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research and the Lasker Award.

Tangent

Karikó has spoken in numerous interviews about her difficult experience at Penn, stating in 2020 her demotion made her feel that she was “not good enough, not smart enough.” After being demoted, researchers usually “just say goodbye and leave because it’s so horrible,” Karikó told STAT News in 2020. When Penn refused to reinstate her to a tenure track position in 2013 and she left for BioNTech, Karikó said “they laughed at me and said, ‘BioNTech doesn’t even have a website.’” In an interview with the Nobel Prize soon after winning, Karikó said she was “kicked out and forced to retire” in 2013 when Penn refused to reinstate her former position. Her colleagues have also recognized the difficulties she faced: cardiologist Elliott Barnathan said Karikó was treated as a “second-class citizen” at Penn.

Crucial Quote

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. Don’t touch it,” Karikó reportedly told her former boss at Penn when leaving her lab at the university for the final time in 2013.

Surprising Fact

While a researcher at Temple University in the late 1980s, Karikó—a native of Hungary—reportedly argued with her boss, who then attempted to have her deported. Karikó had immigrated to the United States in 1985 with little money—she smuggled £900 (the equivalent of $1,087 today), which she earned by selling her car on the black market, into the country by sewing it into her daughter’s teddy bear.