Breaking Through: My Life in Science

A story of perseverance and the power of convictions from the groundbreaking immigrant scientist whose decades-long research led to the COVID-19 vaccines

Dr. Katalin Karikó had an unlikely journey. The daughter of a butcher in postwar communist Hungary, Karikó grew up in a one-room home that lacked running water, where the family grew their own vegetables. She saw the wonder of science and nature all around her and was determined to become a scientist. That determination eventually took her to the United States, where she arrived as a post-doctoral fellow in 1985 with $1,200 sewn into her toddler’s teddy bear and a dream to remake medicine. 

Karikó worked in obscurity, battled cockroaches in a windowless lab, and faced outright derision and even deportation threats from bosses and colleagues. She balked as prestigious research institutions increasingly conflated science and money. Despite setbacks, she never wavered in her belief that an ephemeral and underappreciated molecule called messenger RNA could change the world. Karikó believed that someday mRNA might transform ordinary cells into tiny factories capable of producing their own medicines on demand. She sacrificed nearly everything for this dream, but these obstacles only motivated her, and eventually, she achieved it.

Karikó’s three-decades-long investigation into mRNA ultimately led to a staggering achievement: vaccines that would save millions of lives from COVID-19. These vaccines are just the beginning of mRNA’s potential. Today, the medical community eagerly awaits more mRNA vaccines for the flu, HIV, and other emerging infectious diseases.

Breaking Through explores the questions: How do you keep believing in yourself, and your work, even as others refuse to see your potential? How much is too much to sacrifice for a dream? Karikó’s inspirational memoir isn’t just the story of an extraordinary woman; it’s an indictment of close-minded thinking and a testament to one woman’s commitment to laboring intensely in obscurity not with the intent of ever being recognized, but because she believed her work might help save lives in a culture that is more driven by prestige, power, and privilege.