CNN
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Many think the now-famous mRNA vaccines came into existence in the blink of an eye, at warp speed, in the throes of a deadly pandemic. But for Drew Weissman, who, along with his research partner Katalin Karikó, is credited with developing the platform that made the life-saving mRNA vaccines possible, RNA technology was a long time coming.
Weissman, 63, grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, before attending Brandeis University, and then receiving both a doctorate and a medical degree from Boston University. He eventually landed a fellowship in Dr. Anthony Fauci’s lab at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, where he spent the better part of the ’90s researching dendritic cells, a key biological player in starting the body’s immune response. So, when he found himself at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997, the question of how to bolster the human immune system was already burning in his mind.
Then, serendipity stepped in. Weissman bumped into Karikó, a biochemist at the university, while waiting at the Xerox machine for articles to be photocopied. They began talking about their shared research interest. Karikó, a native of Hungary, had spent decades researching messenger RNA – the biological instruction manual for the production of proteins in human cells – and was convinced of the potential it held for human therapeutics.
Just like that, a scientific dream team was formed.
Their research, however, was an uphill battle. For years, Weissman and Karikó’s experiments with RNA ended in failure. The key problem: The RNA was provoking an immune response that made their lab mice sick. But in 2005, with little support left from the scientific community, the pair had a breakthrough. They realized that by modifying the RNA, it would subvert detection by immune cells, and the proteins that the body synthesized from the RNA would train the immune system to recognize a specific foreign invader. With this modified RNA, the mice no longer got sick and showed the immunity Weissman and Karikó had hoped for.
So, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it didn’t take long – just the amount of time to sequence the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, create the mRNA based on that sequence and send the final product through the regulatory process…
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