11562 - From Demotion to Nobel Prize: The Relentless Journey of Dr. Katalin Karikó
Throughout her career, Dr. Katalin Karikó faced overwhelming institutional and scientific resistance, largely because the scientific community viewed mRNA as too unstable and inflammatory for medical use (Hafner et al., 2025; Rogers, 2024). At the University of Pennsylvania, she endured constant grant rejections, lacked her own lab and a university salary, and was even denied basic supplies like deionized water.