Kati is a leading candidate for a Nobel. Amazing work.

1 fateful day, the 2 scientists hovered over a dot-matrix printer in a narrow room at the end of a long hall. A gamma counter, needed to track the radioactive molecule, was attached to a printer. It began to spew data.

Their detector had found new proteins produced by cells that were never supposed to make them — suggesting that mRNA could be used to direct any cell to make any protein, at will.

“I felt like a god,” Dr. Kariko recalled. [..] On Nov. 8, the first results of the Pfizer-BioNTech study came in, showing that the mRNA vaccine offered powerful immunity to the new virus. Dr. Kariko turned to her husband. “Oh, it works. I thought so.” To celebrate, she ate an entire box of Goobers chocolate-covered peanuts. By herself. Dr. Weissman celebrated with his family, ordering takeout dinner from an Italian restaurant, “with wine”. Deep down, he was awed.

“My dream was always that we develop something in the lab that helps people”. I’ve satisfied my life’s dream.” Dr. Kariko and Dr. Weissman were vaccinated on Dec. 18 at the University of Pennsylvania. Their inoculations turned into a press event, and as the cameras flashed, she began to feel uncharacteristically overwhelmed.

A senior administrator told the doctors and nurses rolling up their sleeves for shots that the scientists whose research made the vaccine possible were present, and they all clapped. Dr. Kariko wept.

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