Matt Kaplan

We're really lucky she stuck with it because she landed at this little pharma company called BioNTech.

And BioNTech said, we think this technique that you're working on has potential for an influenza vaccine.

can you develop it?

And then the pandemic hit and they said, okay, screw that.

Could you create a COVID vaccine with this?

And she did.

Now it's important to mention that in her last years at the university, she started partnering with Drew Weissman, who was an immunologist.

And Weissman said, okay,

I think what we're seeing with the break apart of the mRNA is an immune reaction.

There's something about the messenger RNA that you're injecting in that is causing it to be targeted by the immune system in a way that the messenger RNA that naturally forms in your body is not attacked.

There must be something.

We have to do something to the messenger RNA, decorate it with the right proteins that make the immune system say, oh, you belong here, so it doesn't get mobbed.

And Weissman was integral to identifying that key fact.

And ultimately, Kati Kariko's work with Weissman paved the way for the COVID vaccine to be created in record time and effectively pulled the world out of lockdown, and she won the Nobel Prize.

Well, she should have.

But it's important to notice that Kati Kariko was so like Semmelweis.

Semmelweis believed that he didn't need to publish.

He didn't feel like he needed to stand on a soapbox like Pasteur and shout about his ideas.

He didn't feel like he needed to manipulate the government or convince them to do anything.

He just believed that doing good work