Katalin Karikó, an Abington resident, biochemist, and RNA researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, was recently honored with a Bayh-Dole Coalition American Innovation Award.

The award, which was presented in Washington, D.C., celebrates the people behind life-changing inventions and “the often-overlooked sacrifice and perseverance that characterizes American innovation, and is required to move breakthroughs out of the lab and into the real world.”

From The Philadelphia Business Journal’s coverage:

Karikó collaborated with Penn physician and researcher Dr. Drew Weissman to invent the modified RNA technology that served as the foundation for the Covid-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Karikó and Weissman have already received several prestigious awards for their work, including the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Breakthrough Prize and the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research.

“The award recognizes the importance of how taxpayer money is used for research to benefit the public,” Karikó said. “I’m accepting this award on behalf of hundreds of thousands of scientists worldwide whose work contributed to the vaccines.”

For the full article by the PBJ, you can click here.

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Photo: Penn Medicine