ALD22: Dr Katalin Karikó, Biochemist

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Katalin Karikó

Dr Katalin Karikó

Katalin Karikó is a biochemist whose work on RNA-mediated immune activation laid the foundations required for the development of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.

Karikó was born in 1955 in Hungary, and earnt her PhD at the University of Szeged before going on to do postdoctoral research at the Institute of Biochemistry, Biological Research Centre of Hungary until the lab lost its funding in 1985, at which point she moved to the US.

She began working on Messenger RNA (mRNA) in 1989 at the University of Pennsylvania. She wrote a grant application that proposed using mRNA in gene therapy, but it was rejected. Her ideas were unorthodox and the basic work required to do the research, such as making RNA molecules, was difficult. After a string of rejections, the university demoted her in 1995.

She persevered, hopping from lab to lab in low-paid positions. Then, by chance, Karikó met immunologist Drew Weissman, who wanted to make an HIV vaccine. She thought she could do it, but the mRNA caused the mice’s immune systems to react, triggering inflammation. But during another experiment they noticed that transfer RNA, which they’d used as a control, didn’t result in the same immune reaction as mRNA.

They discovered that nucleoside modifications of mRNA could make it non-immunogenic, but had difficulty getting their findings published. Their results were eventually published in 2005, in Immunity, but didn’t cause a splash at the time because other scientists didn’t believe that mRNA was a “usable molecule”. The paper has, however, now become a seminal publication in the field of mRNA therapeutics.

Karikó and Weissman also worked on developing an mRNA purification technique, as no such protocol existed, and they were eventually able to use high-performance liquid chromatography to purify mRNA. They knew that they could use mRNA to order cells to make any protein, including insulin, hormones or diabetes drugs. They could also use it to create a new type of vaccine where the mRNA would tell cells to make part of the virus, which would then stimulate the immune system. But they couldn’t get any traction.

They founded a company, RNARx, in 2006 and patented several modified nucleosides that reduced the antiviral immune response to mRNA. But the University of Pennsylvania sold the intellectual property rights, so when Moderna asked Karikó if they could licence the patent, all she could say was that she didn’t have it.

Realising that her opportunities to work on mRNA would be greater in industry, Karikó became a vice president at BioNTech RNA Pharmaceuticals in 2013, becoming a senior VP in 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a huge amount of scientific work and collaboration, but it was Karikó’s research that formed the foundation for the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Once Chinese scientists had posted the virus’s genome, BioNTech designed its mRNA vaccine in hours and Moderna completed the task in two days. Other groups provided the data and expertise needed to make the vaccine a reality.

In 2022, Karikó won the Vilcek Prize for Excellence which recognises immigrant contributions to biomedical science and the arts. She has also received Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award for technical and scientific research, the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Horwitz Prize, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

Further Reading

ALD22 Books: Superior, Angela Saini

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Superior: The Return of Race Science, Angela Saini

After the horrors of the Nazi regime in World War II, the mainstream scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. But a worldwide network of intellectual racists and segregationists quietly founded journals and funded research, providing the kind of shoddy studies that were ultimately cited in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s 1994 title The Bell Curve, which purported to show differences in intelligence among races.

If the vast majority of scientists and scholars disavowed these ideas and considered race a social construct, it was an idea that still managed to somehow survive in the way scientists thought about human variation and genetics. Dissecting the statements and work of contemporary scientists studying human biodiversity, most of whom claim to be just following the data, Angela Saini shows us how, again and again, even mainstream scientists cling to the idea that race is biologically real. As our understanding of complex traits like intelligence, and the effects of environmental and cultural influences on human beings, from the molecular level on up, grows, the hope of finding simple genetic differences between “races”—to explain differing rates of disease, to explain poverty or test scores, or to justify cultural assumptions—stubbornly persists.

At a time when racialized nationalisms are a resurgent threat throughout the world, Superior is a rigorous, much-needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of race science—and a powerful reminder that, biologically, we are all far more alike than different. 

Order the book on Bookshop.org.uk here and your purchase will support a local independent bookshop of your choice!

About the Author

Angela Saini is an award-winning science journalist and author based in New York. She presents radio and television programmes, and her writing has appeared in National Geographic, New Scientist, The Sunday Times and Wired. She is a spring 2022 Logan Nonfiction Program Fellow and was in Berlin in summer 2022 as part of the Humboldt Residency Programme on social cohesion. As the founder and chair of the ‘Challenging Pseudoscience’ group at the Royal Institution, Angela researches and campaigns around issues of misinformation and disinformation. 

Her previous book Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong has been translated into fourteen languages. Both are on university reading lists across the world. Angela’s two-part television series for the BBC about the history and science of eugenics aired in 2019. She is currently finishing her fourth book The Patriarchs: In Search of the Origins of Male Domination, which will be published by 4th Estate and Beacon Press in early 2023.

You can follow her work here:

Instagram: @angeladsaini
Website: angelasaini.co.uk

ALD22: Professor Maryna Viazovska, Mathematician

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Maryna Viazovska

Professor Maryna Viazovska

Maryna Viazovska, Марина Вязовська, is a mathematician known for her work in sphere packing. In 2022, she became only the second woman to win the Fields Medal.

Born in Kyiv in 1984, Viazovska competed in national and international mathematics Olympiads throughout her late teens and early 20s. She earnt her masters degree from University of Kaiserslautern in 2007, her PhD from the Institute of Mathematics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2010 and a second doctorate from University of Bonn in 2013. She now works at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL).

The sphere-packing problem asks how spheres can be packed together, in a particular number of dimensions, in the densest possible way. It’s a problem that fascinated Johannes Kepler, (born 1571), who was interested in how best to stack cannonballs. Although it’s easy to see how cannonballs naturally stack, it’s not so easy to prove that a pyramid is the most mathematically efficient way to pack them. That problem was not solved in three dimensions until Thomas Hales in 1998, and it required long and complex computer calculations.

Viazovska proved that an arrangement called the E8 lattice is the densest solution for eight dimensions with a proof that was mathematically very simple. Along with collaborators, she solved the problem for 24 dimensions using the Leech lattice. She also proved that the E8 lattice and Leech lattice are universally optimal, a discovery “on a par with the great breakthroughs of the 19th century”.

Further Reading

ALD22: Dr Rukhmabai Raut, Physician

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Rukhmabai Raut

Dr Rukhmabai Raut

Rukhmabai Raut was the second woman to become a practising physician in India.

Born in 1864 in South Bombay, India, Rukhmabai’s father died when she was two years old. Six years later, her mother, Jayantibai Save, married Sakharam Arjun Raut, a respected physician and social activist in Mumbai who educated his step-daughter at home and encouraged her ambition to study medicine.

Rukhmabai Raut was married to a 19 year old man when she was 11 years old, an arrangement which she and her family resisted despite the fact that it was Hindu custom. She continued to live at home and her husband ignored her until 1885 when, perhaps interested in her dowry, he sought “restitution of conjugal rights”. After years of legal battles, he relinquished his claim over her, accepting instead a payment of 2,000 rupees. Her case was widely covered in India and Europe, provoking an intense debate about social reform and the age of consent in British India, which was eventually raised from 10 to 12 in 1891.

Raut’s legal battles drew her to the attention of many suffrage activists and she was supported by several to continue her education. In 1889, she sailed to England to study medicine at the Royal Free Hospital and then the London School of Medicine for Women. She became a Doctor of Medicine in 1894, eight years after Dr Kadambini Ganguly and Dr Anandibai Joshi. Joshi died of tuberculosis shortly after graduating, so Raut was the second practising female doctor after Ganguly.

Although Raut could have stayed and worked in the UK, she chose to return to India where women had little, if any, access to healthcare. She was not welcomed with open arms, being branded a witch by many, and attacked by upper-caste Hindu conservatives.

In 1895, she became the Chief Medical Officer at the Women’s Hospital in Surat, but when the hospital opened there were no patients as people thought that hospitals were only for those who were dying. She faced an uphill struggle to convince her community that medicine was safe and effective, but worked at the hospital for two decades.

In 1918, she took on a role at the Zenana (Woman’s) State Hospital in Rajkot, where she also established the Red Cross Society. She retired to Bombay in 1929 and died in 1955, aged 90.

Further Reading

ALD22 Books: The World’s First Computer Programmer, Beverley Adams

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The World's First Computer Programmer: The Extraordinary Life of Ada Lovelace

The World’s First Computer Programmer: The Extraordinary Life of Ada Lovelace, Beverley Adams

The name Ada Lovelace perhaps is not a name that you would automatically link to computer science but she was in fact the first person to create a computer algorithm. Working with the renowned scientist Charles Babbage, Lovelace translated a set of notes on Babbage’s new mechanical computer, The Analytical Engine and discovered that in fact it could be programmed to do more than mere mathematical calculations.

Lovelace may have been a mathematical genius but as the only legitimate child of the poet Lord Byron she was also a figure of great scrutiny. Abandoned by her father at just four weeks old, Ada endured a strict childhood in the care of her mother who was adamant that her daughter would not inherit the so-called Byron madness. She ensured Ada was denied all things that were considered exciting and was pushed more towards the logical subjects such as science and mathematics.

Did this strict approach work? Or, did Ada Lovelace inherit more than her genius from her father? Ada was many things, a daughter, wife and mother but above all that she was an inspirational woman, one who defied Victorian ideals by entering the field of mathematical studies and by achieving greatness that is still recognised today.

The World’s First Computer Programmer: The Extraordinary Life of Ada Lovelace will be published by Pen and Sword (@penswordbooks) on 30 March 2023, and you can pre-order it on Amazon.

About the Author

Writer and historian Beverley Adams holds a Masters Degree in English and has written several non-fiction titles for Pen and Sword Books, including The Rebel Suffragette: The Life of Edith Rigby. Her work focuses on bringing the lives of inspirational women back to life and her upcoming books include Ada Lovelace: The World’s First Computer Programmer and Margaret Douglas: The Forgotten Tudor Royal. She is passionate about local history and has contributed numerous articles for the local press. She was born in Preston and still lives in Lancashire.