Katalin's success depended entirely on a global pandemic without warning, and luck was far more important than any other effort. And such a miracle, once in a lifetime.
Written by丨Lian Qingchuan
There is probably no controversy that Katalin Karikó is one of the poorest, if not the poorest Nobel laureates in physiology or medicine.
For nearly 40 years, she never earned more than $60,000 a year. As far as I know, as a journalist with a lower to middle-class income in the United States, the starting salary of a college graduate is about $40,000 to $50,000.
Ironically, however, when the Nobel Committee announced that the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine would be awarded to her on October 2, she was already not poor, and she should even be considered a rich woman.
Since 2020, she and her partner Drew Weissman have swept the most important medical awards in the West, including the Life Science Breakthrough Award in 2021 that gave her $3 million, the same year she also won the Lasker Prize, known as the Nobel vane, and she is also a senior vice president of BioNTech, the world's most profitable pharmaceutical company.
▲ Katalin Karico and her partner Drew Weisman (Photo/Network)
Therefore, the 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million, to be divided equally with her partner Weissman) for the Nobel Prize, as well as the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, are just icing on the cake for her, and they are recognized afterwards. Her troubled years are long over.
Not only that, but she is also one of the humblest Nobel Prize winners, about the 2002 Japanese Chemistry Prize winner, Koichi Tanaka, a small employee of the company. Similarly, before 2020, she did not have any glorious titles, was not a professor at a prestigious university, and did not have any academic spectrum.
Most Nobel Prize winners in science (excluding literature and peace prizes) come from academic giants: either from a family or from a prestigious school. Yang Zhenning of Chinese descent and Lee Zhengdao's teacher, the inventor of the hydrogen bomb, Terry; Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel laureate in economics and author of The Nature of Poverty, is a professor at MIT and has won countless Nobel Prize families, teachers and students.
None of this would have happened to Katalin Kaliko if it weren't for Covid, she is a standard loser.
01
Now, many people use Katalin's 40-year cold bench as an inspirational story. This is actually a very cruel thing, because others cannot understand what kind of suffering and pain 40 years of poverty mean.
"Our home is simple and small. It was built with the surrounding land: an adobe wall was pressed with clay and straw, painted white, and then covered with a thick reed roof. As I remember, the reeds had faded in the sun. They look like a shaggy gray wig. ”
This description comes from Katalin's academic autobiography. She was born in a Hungarian village. The current media has overly simplified to describe her father as a "butcher", but this is not accurate.
Her father was a typical farmer found everywhere in any village in China. He was to grow crops, vegetables, and livestock. The so-called butcher is just one of many scenes of his rural life: raising pigs in his yard, killing them for money, one of the many skills that farmers in our rural areas often see.
But apparently Katalin is gifted. By the age of 14, she had already won third prize in a national biology competition. Of course, she also had excellent grades, so she was admitted to the first-class University of Szeged in Hungary.
So, 40 years of cold bench is not exact, but 50 years, from the time she entered college in 1972, she overheard the mRNA theory discovered in 1961 in a lecture, and since then she has been obsessed and determined.
50 years of cold bench is accompanied by 50 years of poverty, and it also began at this time. The initial difficulties came from Hungary's failed planned economy and economic crisis. In 1985, Katalin, who had already earned her doctorate and worked as a researcher in a Hungarian state-run laboratory, lost her job for the first time at the age of 30.
▲The Katalin family (Photo/Internet)
In her new book, "Exiled Intelligence: Hungarian Scientists in the Diaspora," published in 2023, Katalin says that if she hadn't left Hungary, she would have become an "unremarkable and depressed researcher."
But the reality of hardship may have been the real motivator behind her uprooting: she is married, her daughter is 3 years old, she is trying to move to a new apartment with her husband, and unemployment will ruin the family. So she applied for numerous research positions in the U.S. and finally landed a postdoctoral job at Temple University in Philadelphia.
According to the rules of the Hungarian government at the time, she could only take $100. She sold her family's only asset, the car, on the black market for £900. She took her daughter's teddy bear apart, stuffed the money in, sewed it back up, and held her daughter tightly in her hands throughout the flight to the United States.
▲ Katallin's daughter holds a teddy bear with money (Photo/Internet)
She probably didn't expect that in the United States she would truly become an "ordinary and depressed researcher." All her disasters came from the mRNA of her heart.
A brief description of the three job losses that have been hyped up in all the media:
Because mRNA was attacked by the human immune system, almost all experiments failed. So after 3 years at Temple University, the whole team disbanded and she lost her job.
She was hired by Barnathan, a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, as an assistant professor trying to use mRNA to improve blood vessels after heart bypass surgery. But Barnathan left academia, so she was also unemployed.
She was admitted to neurosurgery to use mRNA technology to treat patients with cerebral thrombosis. But the director of the lab also quickly resigned, and she was still unemployed.
▲ Cataline in the laboratory (Photo/Network)
In fact, unemployment is not the worst experience, but an insult. While in Barnathan's lab in 1989, she applied for her first grant of $100,000 to study mRNA, but apparently the money didn't lead to any breakthroughs. And Katalin hopes to use his research to secure tenure at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1995, the darkest moment of her life came, and she was hit with three major blows: she was misdiagnosed with cancer; The husband was probably unable to return to the United States because of visa problems returning to Hungary; The University of Pennsylvania then sent her an ultimatum: either give up mRNA research or get out. She humiliatingly accepted a demotion and pay cut so that mRNA research could continue.
In the first 20 years of her academic career, there was no success to speak of. Her life was also a mess and there was no light.
How does Katalin view of these years? I suspect she has a grudge in her heart, and even today's success has not relieved her. She said in a speech:
I'm thankful for the people who tried to make my life miserable, the people who demoted me from my position as an employee, the people who fired me from my position, who made me work harder, and I wouldn't be standing here right now without them.
But who can blame her for being so yin and yang weird? If you've ever been as poor as she was, nothing can be accomplished.
02
The catastrophe in Katalin did not end, the reward came too late.
She and Weissman first met in 1997 and got into an argument. Because they all use photocopiers: still on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. At that time, people could only copy and read the latest scientific journals to obtain the latest research results.
But they soon started talking, Weissman's area of expertise was AIDS vaccines, and he never got a breakthrough; Katalin's specialty is the application of mRNA, but there is no breakthrough area. So naturally, Katalin suggested that Weisman give mRNA a try.
So Weisman invited her to join his lab, and the fate of the two was tied together. Katalin has since escaped constant unemployment.
In 2005, they collaborated on their first paper, but it was largely unacceptable and rejected by more than a dozen professional journals. The final paper was published in the very niche journal Immunology. Weisman excitedly told Katalin to get ready to take endless phone calls. However, there was not a single phone call.
In 2006, the reluctant Weisman decided to set up a small company, RNARx, to implement their findings, and successfully received $900,000 in government funding. Katalin serves as CEO. The company's greatest achievement was publishing a series of papers and patenting on the use of mRNA vaccines.
But the patent belongs to the University of Pennsylvania. In 2010, the University of Pennsylvania sold the patent to a small company for $300,000.
But at this time, two startups were eyeing mRNA vaccine technology at the same time. They founded Pennsylvania colleague Derek Rossi of Moderna, and the German company BioNTech. They wanted to buy patents from Katalin and Weissman, but Katalin had no rights at all: because the University of Pennsylvania had already sold.
Their small company, RNARx, went bankrupt that year. Katalin still has nothing and remains a low-level researcher at the University of Pennsylvania.
But the process of mRNA vaccine development has already begun. The two companies began a frantic fundraising and IPO process, respectively. The scientific practice that Katalin and Weisman struggled for decades without progress has become the food of the market with the blessing of financial capital: it just has nothing to do with them.
It wasn't until 2013 that, after several years of capital clashes, BioNTech hired Katalin as vice president to oversee the science of mRNA production.
This was Katalin's last catastrophe. At the age of 58, she was expelled from the University of Pennsylvania: forced retirement. For the next nine years, she had to travel between Germany and the United States, taking care of her family and working hard.
▲ Katalin and Weissman in the laboratory (Photo/Network)
For 10 years, neither company had any vaccine products through clinical trials and went on the market. But the New York Times reported in 2021 that Moderna has made hundreds of millions of dollars for several of its founders. BioNTech raised $150 million when it went public in 2019, giving it a market capitalization of $3.4 billion. The scientific foundation on which the company was built is mRNA technology.
Katalin and Weissman are still unknown, just for a meager salary, as supporters of science. The two companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy patent licenses from small companies that sold patents at the University of Pennsylvania.
For Katallin, this is a helpless but acceptable life. If life just goes on like this, then Katallin's hardship can also be improved. With the commercialization of mRNA technology and the increasing market value of the two companies, Katalin's salary should also rise, but she will be obscure like many scientists who serve commercial companies, and will become the background for the rest of her life.
But fate has always favored drama.
In late 2019, the new crown epidemic broke out, and in early 2020, the Chinese government announced the genetic sequence of the new crown virus. Within hours, BioNTech had designed the vaccine. Two days later, Moderna also designed a vaccine. These two designs were later the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine.
On November 8, 2020, the results of the vaccine experiment jointly designed by BioNTech and Pfizer were released, which have a significant preventive effect on the human body. Katalin listened to the call and turned to her husband and said, "Oh, it works. That's what I thought. Then, to celebrate her success, she ate an entire box of peanut chocolates.
On December 18 of that year, she was vaccinated with Weisman at the University of Pennsylvania. For the two only heroes of the mRNA vaccine, the vaccination became a media event, and Katalin, who had never been baptized by flash, cried.
▲ Katalin and Weissman vaccinated with mRNA vaccine (Figure/Internet)
The story that followed was familiar, and Katalin accepted all the awards and became an honorary professor at all major universities until the Nobel Prize sealed the pinnacle of her life.
In 2022, Time magazine selected the 100 most influential people of the year, and Katalin was elected. Jennifer Doudna, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, wrote: "All those who have received American or European vaccines owe Katalin a huge gratitude. ”
One study calculated the effects of mRNA vaccines: In the United States alone, vaccines saved 3 million lives, saved 17 million people from hospitalization, and reduced economic losses by at least $1 trillion.
What god would have done such a great good deed?
03
She has become a hero of Hungary, her portrait hangs in many public places, and she has become a professor at the University of Szeged. The miserable life of the past 50 years has all been compensated. She is 68 years old.
Hardly any reports of her husband can be found in media reports. His name was Bella Francia and he was only known as an engineer who worked as the manager of an apartment complex. They married in 1977 and are alumni of the University of Szeged.
Catallin's colleagues and friends had advised her to simply switch fields of study, at least the main research field, and change to a tenured teaching position, when she was repeatedly unemployed and the company went bankrupt.
If you get a tenured teaching position, you can evaluate professors, you can increase your salary, and you can be more famous. Katarin is outgoing and very talkative, so why not be a little dusty with the light.
She also hesitated when she was expelled in 2013. In an interview with the Nobel Committee, she said. But her husband disagreed. Therefore, he would rather keep a poor life than let his wife gain inner pleasure.
Her former name was "Susan's Mom". Susan Francia is their only daughter, born in 1982, in fact, Susanna Francia, is a Hungarian name, can speak fluent Hungarian, it can be seen that Katalin and Bella speak Hungarian at home, and Katalin has a strong Hungarian accent in English so far.
Susan was much more famous than Katalin before. In 2008 and 2012, she won the women's eight-man sculls championship at the Beijing and London Olympics, respectively. She's also a model.
Susan's parents are tall, so she inherited her parents' size, and since high school, she has been invited by various coaches to participate in sports, and she did not have any qualities, until she was a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, she confirmed that she had a talent for rowing, and since then she has been nailed to the project, becoming an athlete, becoming a champion, becoming a coach.
She had nothing to do with her parents' major, and she earned a bachelor's degree in criminology and a master's degree in sociology.
If her parents played any role in her career, she said in an interview with ESPN: "When I was rowing, I had my back to my goal and didn't know when I would reach the finish. The only thing you can do is keep trying. ”
▲Susan in the rowing race (Photo/Internet)
The inheritance she received from her parents was a work ethic. Ask only about paying, not about gain. Katalin told the Nobel committee interviewer that you don't have to help your children too much, you just do what you want. They will imitate your behavior.
Her advice to female scientists is not to balance family and work, because there are no contradictions. In life, Katalin has long been rewarded, supported by her husband, and loved by her daughter.
04
Katalin's appearance in the news is just the beginning.
mRNA technology is an underlying technology that fundamentally subverts vaccine production. As a liberal arts student, I certainly don't have the ability to study how mRNA is used, but the conclusions summarized in the report are roughly as follows:
If mRNA is applied directly to the human body, the body's immune system will treat it as an invader and will constantly attack it, making it unable to survive in the human body. Katalin and Weissman invented a technique that tricked the immune system into thinking that mRNA posed no threat, so mRNA could synthesize many compounds in the body to attack viral cells.
Weisman has shown great ambition in the interview. He said, I've moved forward, we want to use mRNA for pan-coronavirus vaccines, malaria vaccines, leptospirosis disease, peanut allergy, in fact, any vaccine with infectious diseases.
▲ Kadru Weisman (Photo/Network)
Now, mRNA has become obvious, many vaccines will be developed, and these two people, as the mother and father of mRNA vaccine applications, will appear in countless media in the future.
But don't fool the younger generation or academics into imitating Katalin's inspirational story.
Her story is anything but inspirational, but depends entirely on the favor of fate. Without the pandemic, Katalin would not have lived in poverty, but her 40 or 50 years of poverty would have been nothing more than a wedding dress for the financial development and drug development of BioNTech and Moderna, as well as an unknown scientific advisor behind the scenes.
Katalin's success depended entirely on a global pandemic without warning, and luck was far more important than any other effort. And such a miracle, once in a lifetime. Without this luck, no one would have rehabilitated her, there would be no opportunity for her to vent her resentment, and there would be no great reward worthy of her perseverance.
She is just a very accidental salted fish turning story, and her academic background and scientific heritage give her almost no chance of getting ahead. And in the foreseeable years to come, the Nobel Prize in science will still be awarded to those academic giants.
The world has always been like this, and it works equally well for Katalin: they reward the winners endlessly and disdain those who persist.
Only one thing about Katallin's story is valid, and it validates in her daughter: love can compensate for all setbacks.
▲ Katalin and daughter Susan (Photo/Internet)
In fact, before 2020, she had already received what she deserved: family happiness, daughter success, and her own research became a direction in the market. Even if the pandemic hadn't happened, she would have been proud of all mediocre fame and fortune chasers.
I used to like Hu Lancheng's "Zen is a Flower", he borrowed a public case from the Zen classic "Biyanlu", saying that heroes and beauties are all relatives of all people, so they are wronged families, and they are wrong in one way (together), and they want to humiliate him. When he is not in a pan, others do not want to think only about him. Therefore, "when people see this flower, it is like a dream."
But I now feel that what Hu Lancheng said is really frivolous. The world has always worshiped the high and the low, which is the endless icing on the cake for the winners, and the endless torments for the losers. The snobbery and coolness of the world have never changed.
No god can have such merit as Katalin. The reward given to her was far from commensurate her contribution.
But we are all mortals, and we are not worthy of the incense enjoyed by the gods. So what I mean is that in the end, people just stick to the people and things they love. At the age of 16, Katalin read a book that he remembers to this day: Focus on one thing you can change.
Perhaps her story really has an unusual revelation for Chinese. In a country where you want to become a dragon, you can't let him or her stick to the cold bench for 40 years: school district housing, cram schools, and the burning desire for graduate school entrance examinations are all anti-Katalin roads.
The heroes of the modern world are all paranoid like Katalin, such as Musk, such as Huang Jenxun, such as Bill Gates. They are not a single flower, they were all once mercilessly spurned by the world.
Katalin's first book, the academic autobiography "Breakthrough: My Scientific Life", is about to be published on October 10, 2023, of course, not just written, but after 2020, just in preparation for it, just in time for her Nobel Prize. "Heaven and earth work together", is this a compliment, or is it a kind of irony?