Katalin Karikó, PhD, who is now a professor at the University of Szeged, Hungary, had one goal in mind when she was working with messenger RNA (mRNA) to develop therapeutics. It had nothing to do with vaccines—whether for viruses, cancer, or any other condition in which it would make sense to bring in the immune system. “I never thought it would be immunogenic because I was only thinking about using mRNA to produce proteins inside of cells … or more receptors already found in the body,” Karikó told Inside Precision Medicine.

Then, while knee-deep in research literature, the lightbulb moment came. “I was thinking about why the mRNA therapeutics were failing, and then I realized that the body was fighting it with an inflammatory response,” said Karikó. So, in the early 2000s, Karikó teamed

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