This year Karikó is the main speaker at the “Vienna Congress com.sult 2022”, which awards the prize every year and this year focuses on the topic of health.
“We want to send a strong signal for scientific achievements and their importance for our future,” says congress initiator David Ungar-Klein on Sunday. “With her research work, Katalin Karikó set the course for the whole world, which will also open up new paths to health in many other medical areas.”
At the award ceremony, Minister of Agriculture Elisabeth Köstinger (ÖVP) praised Karikó’s “achievements in the service of all of humanity”. After 40 years of research, she never lost her dedication and pursued her path. “This discipline and its enormous perseverance have changed the lives of billions of people.”
“It is important to confront the rampant hostility to science with the facts and context,” said Thomas Szekeres, President of the Medical Association. The Vienna Congress sets a strong and valuable focus on health, science and Corona. “The achievements of Katalin Karikó, whose research forms the crucial basis for the development of mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines, are also crucial for the medical profession itself, which has been and is at the forefront in the fight against Corona worldwide.”
“Mother of mRNA Vaccines”
The Hungarian-born Katalin Karikó (67), who teaches in the USA, is often referred to as the “mother of mRNA vaccines”. In order to put her research results into practice, she came to Germany in 2013 to join BioNTech, the then little-known biotechnology company based in Mainz. Actually, she never intended to develop a vaccine, she also came to Germany to work on therapies for the treatment of cancer, said Karikó. “My colleague Drew Weissman (who did research with her at the University of Pennsylvania on nucleoside-modified mRNA) always wanted to develop a vaccine, I didn’t.” The knowledge gained in this way is likely to play an important role in the treatment of numerous diseases in the future.
“Special Golden Arrow” an Radfahrerin Kiesenhofer
Olympic cycling champion Anna Kiesenhofer was honored this year with the “Special Golden Arrow” for Austrians whose achievements have put Austria in the international limelight. “Mrs. Kiesenhofer combines top-level sport and science in one person. That is something extraordinary,” said Minister of Agriculture Köstinger.
Source: Nachrichten
