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Philly scientist behind COVID vaccine tech was demoted by UPenn

316 points by apsec112 6y ago

nerdbaggy 6y ago
While the title of this article is accurate it’s deceiving. She was demoted sometime in the 1980-1990s. The article even says she stopped working for the school in 2013 and went to work for a pharma firm. The article even says she went pack to UPenn this year to get her vaccine.
- signal11 6y ago
  Not just any pharma firm, she joined BioNTech, which created the Pfizer vaccine.
  - foepys 6y ago
    Why is it always called "the Pfizer vaccine" when it's clearly a joint operation between Biontech and Pfizer with Biontech being the inventor of the vaccine and Pfizer being the pharma giant that is able to help with resources and producing it at scale?
    - jonny_eh 6y ago
      Easier to say. Just like "Oxford" vaccine instead of "Astrazeneca/Oxford".
      - foepys 6y ago
        But in this case it's the BioNTech vaccine then.
      - rsynnott 6y ago
        That’s essentially the opposite situation, though. Presumably Oxford has better PR people than BioNTech. It also has the great advantage of being easier to spell.
      - the-dude 6y ago
        GNU/Linux please.
        rantwasp 6y ago
        this escalated quickly
    - notacoward 6y ago
      Because Pfizer has a marketing department many times bigger than all of BioNTech.
    - easytiger 6y ago
      > Why is it always called "the Pfizer vaccine" False supposition, in most cases in my reading it is called Pfizer/BioNTech in reference
    - simonh 6y ago
      Because the vaccine is manufactured and distributed by Pfizer, so that's who you buy it from and that's what it says on the packaging.
- jonas21 6y ago
  It's also misleading in other ways (perhaps unintentionally). For example: > After six years, her bosses at Penn were reportedly so frustrated by the lack of momentum that they cut her salary and demoted her. Actually, she was denied tenure. At most universities, going up for tenure after 6 years is just part of the process, and it's fairly common for people to be denied. It's not like they singled her out.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    ... and being denied tenure is a pretty clear signal that it's time to move on. You're branded now, and there isn't much hope for advancement if you stay.
pjc50 6y ago
Saving the world is one thing, but she failed at the most important metric: securing grant funding for her institution. Probably her impact factor was terrible too. /S
- api 6y ago
  You get what you measure. We get publications.
  - MichaelZuo 6y ago
    The follies of human organizations since time immemorial summed up in a single point.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    I feel like this saying would be better phrased as, "you get what you reward," because as long as you don't directly incentivize the metric it can still be useful.
    - drivers99 6y ago
      “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- PedroBatista 6y ago
  Indeed, never heard of her until a few months ago. How many followers has she?
  - jonny_eh 6y ago
    How many citations? Clearly it's those that count.
    - tchalla 6y ago
      She has an impressive h-index (51) and citation count (12000+) currently. Her pre-2013 count isn’t that impressive as current, but good. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PS_CX0AAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PS_CX0AAAAAJ&hl=en...
joshuakelly 6y ago
As a few other commenters have mentioned, this is a story about how Karikó was sidelined early in her career. The Penn demotion occurred in 1991. She eventually left in 2013 when, despite publishing groundbreaking research in the mid 00s, she was never returned to a tenure-track position. Nonetheless an impressive story of conviction and perseverance. Penn has decades-old egg on its face, rather than months-old fresh egg.
- lou1306 6y ago
  It's also a depressing tale for wannabe academics, however. mRNA vaccines are an impressive, groundbreaking development. Dr Kariko (and others) may get a Nobel for that. And yet, she was kicked off the tenure track because she failed to secure VC investments, for chrissake.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    University research is a business now, like most things in higher-ed.
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      If it was really a business, they would support ideas like "developing a revolutionary and extremely important technology." It's worse than a business - it's an amorphous political and bureaucratic mess.
      - pimlottc 6y ago
        I mean, there are plenty of actual businesses that also do short-sighted things (and up going out of business).
        bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        there are also plenty of business that do short-sighted things but continue making money because they have a cash-cow or two which allows them to be idiots everywhere else. I mean this is really the ABCs of modern business.
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
It sounds like she was not able to raise the money to continue her research. That’s not really UPenn’s fault. No one can know in advance which ideas are promising enough, so it isn’t reasonable to blame them. This isn’t a scandal or an embarrassment. If, after working for decades, no one is willing to fund you, it’s kind of expected that they have to cut their losses at some point. She was apparently working on it for over 20 years! It turned out that all of the grant money and VC money didn’t see the right risk/value potential in it, so they declined to provide their money, but BioNTech did and hired her as a VP. I suspect this ended much better for her than staying at Penn would have.
- mannykannot 6y ago
  An institution of the prestige UPenn aspires to is supposed to provide research leadership, and not just be a place for VCs to subcontract their work.
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    That’s great, but assuming she (and everyone else working on research that they felt was important) expected to be paid, the money has to come from somewhere, right? Tuition costs are already too high and we are calling in the government to pay for student loans. So what do people expect? Obviously with a crystal ball they probably would have kept her funded (if this is even the full story - and it probably isn’t), but we shouldn’t blame them for not having one. 20+ years with no takers sounds like a pretty fair shake. Are they just supposed to fund everyone indefinitely so they can never be accused of missing something good? Not even VCs have a great track record at picking winners, and they do this for a living.
    - mannykannot 6y ago
      > Are they just supposed to fund everyone indefinitely so they can never be accused of missing something good? No, of course not - that is just an unhelpful false-dichotomy straw man reply (like the whole of wuwuno's). The issue of funding both fundamental research and that which lacks a pathway to short-term profitability is a difficult one, much more subtle than you presented in your original post, where getting VC funding was presented as the sole criterion that mattered (the point of view given in that post amounted to saying that delegating all decisions to VCs was the proper way to go about it.) One of the reasons vaccine reasearch hasn't been attracting a lot of VC funding is that vaccines are not nearly the money-makers that drugs and tests are. We're lucky that some research was kept going despite this, and the lesson from that is that we should not trust in VC funding being the predominant determinant of funding.
m0llusk 6y ago
This mRNA technology is amazing. One of the great hopes is that it may be possible to target specific cancers with great accuracy thereby saving many lives. Hopefully these vaccines are just a start.
- lambdasquirrel 6y ago
  I’m surprised there are few articles in the news about how they work, and why it’s a big deal. One of the other vaccines developed in China uses a common adenovirus as a carrier for the SARS-COV-2 genetic material and that was why it had lower efficacy. The Oxford vaccine uses some less-common adenovirus, which is somewhat better, but mRNA lets you bypass using viruses as a vector altogether.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    You're right, but what matters much more is that the investors realized the potential (5x in 1 year after the correction). Moderna was on the roadmap for ARK invest for a long time (and compensated for it heavily). Now that mRNA is proven technology, it can bring all other gene technologies up with it.
kken 6y ago
This is actually quite a good background story on the mRNA COVID-Vaccines, that also explains Karikós role in more detail. https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-... WSJ also has a number of good articles: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-delivered-a-covid-vaccine-in-record-time-crazy-deadlines-a-pushy-ceo-11607740483 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-delivered-a-covid-va... https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-couples-quest-to-cure-cancer-led-to-the-wests-first-covid-19-vaccine-11606905001 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-couples-quest-to-cure-can... https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-partner-biontech-became-a-leader-in-coronavirus-vaccine-race-11603359015 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-partner-biontech-bec... What I found quite interesting was the latest news release from BioNtech where they thank all their partners. Some parts of the supply chain are only served by very small companies. https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/biontech-recognizes-employees-and-partners-their-support https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...
- netsharc 6y ago
  Curious that they mentioned their local pharmacy (Phoenix-Apotheke Mainz, on the same street as their office). I wonder what it supplied.
- rramadass 6y ago
  The first "statnews" link is excellent! Everybody should read it; really explains the technology for the layperson in simple language. Thanks for the link. PS: The WSJ articles are all behind a paywall and hence inaccessible.
vmception 6y ago
Researcher fails to make money for half a decade because they were working on something that they wouldn't figure out for an additional two decades. Okay...? If this still bothers you, please tell me what kind of organization would exist to support 25 years of false starts, and what needs to change to make that kind of organization exist.
- lb504 6y ago
  > If this still bothers you, please tell me what kind of organization would exist to support 25 years of false starts, and what needs to change to make that kind of organization exist. A Federal Universal Basic Income along with a Single Payer Healthcare system would go a long way to supporting 25 years of false starts for projects where the primary initial investment is intellectual labor. Many science, engineering, and cultural projects fit this description.
  - easytiger 6y ago
    And yet, it was developed under free market principles and delivered to market with no one getting a UBI. UBI is a fantasy for children.
  - krona 6y ago
    You're implying she could've done all this research in her bedroom? I doubt it.
    - unethical_ban 6y ago
      No, they're not. They're implying that a world where the government takes an even more active role in promoting economic activity, and secures the fundamental aspects of human dignity for its citizens, would be a society where more people can spend time on their passions, which often are things like "develop a groundbreaking new style of vaccination".
      - kofejnik 6y ago
        there's already a country where the government is taking a very active role in promoting economic activity, specifically North Korea
Duller-Finite 6y ago
A similar article was published in Wired about a month ago: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfi...
- rramadass 6y ago
  Pretty good article; mentions the others involved in the whole "mRNA" research. Thanks for posting the link.
ineedasername 6y ago
Unfortunately, research that may lead to amazing results can take decades, yielding little commercial value or shiny tech that grant givers want to throw money at. They too are likely evaluated against the short-term outcomes of the grants they award. Also unfortunately, it is very difficult to distinguish between one decades-long research path that will, eventually, yield significant results, and another one that will end in failure with nothing to show for it.
- rramadass 6y ago
  >unfortunately, it is very difficult to distinguish between one decades-long research path that will, eventually, yield significant results, and another one that will end in failure with nothing to show for it But that is the very nature of Research in basic hard sciences. We have to have systems in place which have such monetary/time losses factored in. The problem today is that Academia is using the same "short-term gains" yardstick used in the Industry which is completely wrong. The nature of the subject should dictate your manner of funding it.
  - ksk 6y ago
    >We have to have systems in place which have such monetary/time losses factored in. Sure, everyone agrees with that. Can you propose a model that will work?
    - rramadass 6y ago
      The "University Framework" already exists to support such a system. The problem is that Industry has infiltrated itself into the system and turned the "Research Objective" into "Profit Motive". This has to be eradicated completely. Others in this same thread have also proposed some ideas and i will try to add to it; * Establish a network of "Research Universities" from each country in the World (sort of UN of Universities). The poorer countries can be partially funded by richer countries. This is to ensure that knowledge flows are not constrained due to lack of resources. * Research in the various Sciences have to be clearly identified as "Critical" or Not. The former is funded and managed completely differently than the latter. For example, research in vaccines/cancer is considered critical while research in "battery chemistry"(currently a hot area of research) is not. In the former case, all we keep tabs on is "some progress" and not necessarily an external deadline i.e. researchers are given the freedom to keep working on it with self-imposed and self-defined milestones. * All "money making" (eg. licenses/patents/royalties etc.) from Research is to be shared between Researchers, Institution and Industry (where applicable). * All "Research" in Universities get funding from the following sources, some with constraints and some without; ----- 1) Govt. grant as part of yearly budget with no strings attached. This is taxpayer money and any output is available to the public. ----- 2) Academia/Industry tie-up (eg. VC/Angel money) where all stakeholders needs are considered. However if the research is considered "critical" Industry needs may be waived. ----- 3) "Corporate Social Responsibility"(CSR) money from all large corporations/rich folks etc. ----- 4) Revenue/Profit from University "businesses" like Education etc. * Finally, No "Research" project should ever be overseen by purely "Administrative/Finance/MBA" types. Only Core Domain Experts should be granted oversight with the above mentioned helping as needed.
chriskanan 6y ago
Academia gives you six years to publish top-tier papers and obtain significant grant funding to impress one's peers. Failure to do that and have a mediocre, but not an abysmal, teaching record means dismissal (i.e., not being on the tenure track any longer - not necessarily being fired outright). In general, the system works okay, but one has to play the game. Winning grants is extraordinarily hard, even more so today than it was in the 1980s. To me it is unclear whether to blame the university, the grant agency reviewers, or her writing (one must make a convincing arguments to the reviewers, which is very hard if one is breaking with dogma). Her university peers may not have been able to see how revolutionary her work was at the time and so they fell back on the metrics. Getting tenure is extremely difficult. I applied for it this year at my university...
- voxl 6y ago
  If the system disregards revolutionary research because it's too hard to understand (which, by the way, there is evidence that established members of a field actively block revolutionary research because they "know" it won't work out) then it is the system that should be changed.
  - rramadass 6y ago
    Well said!
  - NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
    Sure, but universities are old and stodgy. Maybe it’s people who want to be professors in the first place that should be changed. With hindsight, moving to BioNTech seems like the best decision she could have made, and now she can enjoy the final laugh.
8bitsrule 6y ago
Also another case where "Researchers’ patents are often held by the institutions where they work." I wonder what the law is around that ... what percentage are the discoverers legally entitled to? If the answer is obscene, what efforts have been made to fix that?
- sarpeedo 6y ago
  Not a lawyer but I've participated in "technology transfer" at a university. At University of Washington one of the standard deals is 27% for the inventors (for patent license revenue). Of course every deal is negotiable. When you use university resources such as lab space and students the university will take some financial share. When it comes to equity stake in a startup the deal negotiated becomes much more tricky of course and the university may maintain an equity stake in the company in exchange for exclusive licensing of the patents. https://comotion.uw.edu/what-we-do/startup-related-services/how-proceeds-are-distributed-to-inventors/ https://comotion.uw.edu/what-we-do/startup-related-services/... http://www.washington.edu/admin/rules/policies/APS/59.04.html http://www.washington.edu/admin/rules/policies/APS/59.04.htm...
poxwole 6y ago
The result of running universities like a business. People are more concerned about publications and conference and funding than actual science which is slow and unremarkable most of the time.
Kurbelwelle 6y ago
I don't understand why the current failure of at least the US university system to actually promote long-term thinking and research isn't a bigger issue. How many people's lives could have been saved by research that was never done? How might society have been improved? Like, there's literally millions (billions?) of human lives on the line.
ignoramous 6y ago
Funny how biases work. It is "Philly" when positive. "Immigrant" when negative.
gogopuppygogo 6y ago
Reminds me of the Doctor who was ostracized by the medical community for his theories on what causes an Ulcer. He ended up giving himself an Ulcer to show he could cure it. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-doctor-who-drank-infectious-broth-gave-himself-an-ulcer-and-solved-a-medical-mystery https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-doctor-who-drank...
nyokodo 6y ago
If there is not an appropriate award that already exists then it should be created and then given to her and any other unsung heroes in this area. If no institution does it then it should be crowd funded and presented by a new foundation. I will donate!!
- signal11 6y ago
  There is some talk of a Nobel Prize in chemistry for Dr Katalin Karikó and her collaborator Dr Drew Weissman. From what I’ve heard, mRNA as a technique is quite an advance — if true then they deserve all the accolades they get to make up for the years of fruitless, unappreciated research.
  - rramadass 6y ago
    Agree 100%. All the people involved in this vaccine should be given the Nobel in Medicine/Chemistry.
hollander 6y ago
> Penn officials declined to comment on their relationship with Karikó, previous or current. “We are unable to discuss specifics about faculty or staff employment matters,” spokesperson Stephen Maccarthy told Billy Penn. Privacy is the such a convenient and perfect excuse for institutions to cover up their mess.
- trianglem 6y ago
  Put away your pitchfork, this demotion was in the 90s
  - varjag 6y ago
    That mostly means we could have mRNA vaccines a decade earlier.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      perhaps, or maybe it means we would have mRNA vaccines decades later.
      - NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
        Exactly. Her moving to BioNTech seems to have been the best outcome possible... even though I completely understand her sourness at Penn. But it sounds like she’ll get the last laugh and can call out Penn for its lack of vision.
        s1artibartfast 6y ago
        yeah, and it is entirely possible that developing mRNA technology simply wasn't a good fit for Penn, even if it was long term viable and within their ability to fund. It it seems pretty unfair to say that "the school wasn’t very supportive of the scientist who led the charge." They gave her 6 years runway while she tried to find external funding and get the technology off the ground before kicking her off tenure, and kept her on payroll until the she made her breakthrough another 10 years later. If I understand the timeline right, she started at Penn in 89, was kicked off tenure in 95, published her major mRNA paper in 2005, then left Penn to be a senior VP in 2013.

316 points by apsec112 6y ago

While the title of this article is accurate it’s deceiving. She was demoted sometime in the 1980-1990s. The article even says she stopped working for the school in 2013 and went to work for a pharma firm. The article even says she went pack to UPenn this year to get her vaccine.

signal11 6y ago
Not just any pharma firm, she joined BioNTech, which created the Pfizer vaccine.
- foepys 6y ago
  Why is it always called "the Pfizer vaccine" when it's clearly a joint operation between Biontech and Pfizer with Biontech being the inventor of the vaccine and Pfizer being the pharma giant that is able to help with resources and producing it at scale?
  - jonny_eh 6y ago
    Easier to say. Just like "Oxford" vaccine instead of "Astrazeneca/Oxford".
    - foepys 6y ago
      But in this case it's the BioNTech vaccine then.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      That’s essentially the opposite situation, though. Presumably Oxford has better PR people than BioNTech. It also has the great advantage of being easier to spell.
    - the-dude 6y ago
      GNU/Linux please.
      - rantwasp 6y ago
        this escalated quickly
  - notacoward 6y ago
    Because Pfizer has a marketing department many times bigger than all of BioNTech.
  - easytiger 6y ago
    > Why is it always called "the Pfizer vaccine" False supposition, in most cases in my reading it is called Pfizer/BioNTech in reference
  - simonh 6y ago
    Because the vaccine is manufactured and distributed by Pfizer, so that's who you buy it from and that's what it says on the packaging.
jonas21 6y ago
It's also misleading in other ways (perhaps unintentionally). For example: > After six years, her bosses at Penn were reportedly so frustrated by the lack of momentum that they cut her salary and demoted her. Actually, she was denied tenure. At most universities, going up for tenure after 6 years is just part of the process, and it's fairly common for people to be denied. It's not like they singled her out.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  ... and being denied tenure is a pretty clear signal that it's time to move on. You're branded now, and there isn't much hope for advancement if you stay.

pjc50 6y ago

Saving the world is one thing, but she failed at the most important metric: securing grant funding for her institution. Probably her impact factor was terrible too. /S

api 6y ago
You get what you measure. We get publications.
- MichaelZuo 6y ago
  The follies of human organizations since time immemorial summed up in a single point.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  I feel like this saying would be better phrased as, "you get what you reward," because as long as you don't directly incentivize the metric it can still be useful.
  - drivers99 6y ago
    “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
PedroBatista 6y ago
Indeed, never heard of her until a few months ago. How many followers has she?
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  How many citations? Clearly it's those that count.
  - tchalla 6y ago
    She has an impressive h-index (51) and citation count (12000+) currently. Her pre-2013 count isn’t that impressive as current, but good. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PS_CX0AAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PS_CX0AAAAAJ&hl=en...

joshuakelly 6y ago

As a few other commenters have mentioned, this is a story about how Karikó was sidelined early in her career. The Penn demotion occurred in 1991. She eventually left in 2013 when, despite publishing groundbreaking research in the mid 00s, she was never returned to a tenure-track position. Nonetheless an impressive story of conviction and perseverance. Penn has decades-old egg on its face, rather than months-old fresh egg.

lou1306 6y ago
It's also a depressing tale for wannabe academics, however. mRNA vaccines are an impressive, groundbreaking development. Dr Kariko (and others) may get a Nobel for that. And yet, she was kicked off the tenure track because she failed to secure VC investments, for chrissake.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  University research is a business now, like most things in higher-ed.
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    If it was really a business, they would support ideas like "developing a revolutionary and extremely important technology." It's worse than a business - it's an amorphous political and bureaucratic mess.
    - pimlottc 6y ago
      I mean, there are plenty of actual businesses that also do short-sighted things (and up going out of business).
      - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        there are also plenty of business that do short-sighted things but continue making money because they have a cash-cow or two which allows them to be idiots everywhere else. I mean this is really the ABCs of modern business.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

It sounds like she was not able to raise the money to continue her research. That’s not really UPenn’s fault. No one can know in advance which ideas are promising enough, so it isn’t reasonable to blame them. This isn’t a scandal or an embarrassment. If, after working for decades, no one is willing to fund you, it’s kind of expected that they have to cut their losses at some point. She was apparently working on it for over 20 years! It turned out that all of the grant money and VC money didn’t see the right risk/value potential in it, so they declined to provide their money, but BioNTech did and hired her as a VP. I suspect this ended much better for her than staying at Penn would have.

mannykannot 6y ago
An institution of the prestige UPenn aspires to is supposed to provide research leadership, and not just be a place for VCs to subcontract their work.
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  That’s great, but assuming she (and everyone else working on research that they felt was important) expected to be paid, the money has to come from somewhere, right? Tuition costs are already too high and we are calling in the government to pay for student loans. So what do people expect? Obviously with a crystal ball they probably would have kept her funded (if this is even the full story - and it probably isn’t), but we shouldn’t blame them for not having one. 20+ years with no takers sounds like a pretty fair shake. Are they just supposed to fund everyone indefinitely so they can never be accused of missing something good? Not even VCs have a great track record at picking winners, and they do this for a living.
  - mannykannot 6y ago
    > Are they just supposed to fund everyone indefinitely so they can never be accused of missing something good? No, of course not - that is just an unhelpful false-dichotomy straw man reply (like the whole of wuwuno's). The issue of funding both fundamental research and that which lacks a pathway to short-term profitability is a difficult one, much more subtle than you presented in your original post, where getting VC funding was presented as the sole criterion that mattered (the point of view given in that post amounted to saying that delegating all decisions to VCs was the proper way to go about it.) One of the reasons vaccine reasearch hasn't been attracting a lot of VC funding is that vaccines are not nearly the money-makers that drugs and tests are. We're lucky that some research was kept going despite this, and the lesson from that is that we should not trust in VC funding being the predominant determinant of funding.

m0llusk 6y ago

This mRNA technology is amazing. One of the great hopes is that it may be possible to target specific cancers with great accuracy thereby saving many lives. Hopefully these vaccines are just a start.

lambdasquirrel 6y ago
I’m surprised there are few articles in the news about how they work, and why it’s a big deal. One of the other vaccines developed in China uses a common adenovirus as a carrier for the SARS-COV-2 genetic material and that was why it had lower efficacy. The Oxford vaccine uses some less-common adenovirus, which is somewhat better, but mRNA lets you bypass using viruses as a vector altogether.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  You're right, but what matters much more is that the investors realized the potential (5x in 1 year after the correction). Moderna was on the roadmap for ARK invest for a long time (and compensated for it heavily). Now that mRNA is proven technology, it can bring all other gene technologies up with it.

kken 6y ago

This is actually quite a good background story on the mRNA COVID-Vaccines, that also explains Karikós role in more detail. https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-... WSJ also has a number of good articles: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-delivered-a-covid-vaccine-in-record-time-crazy-deadlines-a-pushy-ceo-11607740483 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-delivered-a-covid-va... https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-couples-quest-to-cure-cancer-led-to-the-wests-first-covid-19-vaccine-11606905001 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-couples-quest-to-cure-can... https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-partner-biontech-became-a-leader-in-coronavirus-vaccine-race-11603359015 https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-pfizer-partner-biontech-bec... What I found quite interesting was the latest news release from BioNtech where they thank all their partners. Some parts of the supply chain are only served by very small companies. https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/biontech-recognizes-employees-and-partners-their-support https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

netsharc 6y ago
Curious that they mentioned their local pharmacy (Phoenix-Apotheke Mainz, on the same street as their office). I wonder what it supplied.
rramadass 6y ago
The first "statnews" link is excellent! Everybody should read it; really explains the technology for the layperson in simple language. Thanks for the link. PS: The WSJ articles are all behind a paywall and hence inaccessible.

vmception 6y ago

Researcher fails to make money for half a decade because they were working on something that they wouldn't figure out for an additional two decades. Okay...? If this still bothers you, please tell me what kind of organization would exist to support 25 years of false starts, and what needs to change to make that kind of organization exist.

lb504 6y ago
> If this still bothers you, please tell me what kind of organization would exist to support 25 years of false starts, and what needs to change to make that kind of organization exist. A Federal Universal Basic Income along with a Single Payer Healthcare system would go a long way to supporting 25 years of false starts for projects where the primary initial investment is intellectual labor. Many science, engineering, and cultural projects fit this description.
- easytiger 6y ago
  And yet, it was developed under free market principles and delivered to market with no one getting a UBI. UBI is a fantasy for children.
- krona 6y ago
  You're implying she could've done all this research in her bedroom? I doubt it.
  - unethical_ban 6y ago
    No, they're not. They're implying that a world where the government takes an even more active role in promoting economic activity, and secures the fundamental aspects of human dignity for its citizens, would be a society where more people can spend time on their passions, which often are things like "develop a groundbreaking new style of vaccination".
    - kofejnik 6y ago
      there's already a country where the government is taking a very active role in promoting economic activity, specifically North Korea

Duller-Finite 6y ago

A similar article was published in Wired about a month ago: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfi...

rramadass 6y ago
Pretty good article; mentions the others involved in the whole "mRNA" research. Thanks for posting the link.

ineedasername 6y ago

Unfortunately, research that may lead to amazing results can take decades, yielding little commercial value or shiny tech that grant givers want to throw money at. They too are likely evaluated against the short-term outcomes of the grants they award. Also unfortunately, it is very difficult to distinguish between one decades-long research path that will, eventually, yield significant results, and another one that will end in failure with nothing to show for it.

rramadass 6y ago
>unfortunately, it is very difficult to distinguish between one decades-long research path that will, eventually, yield significant results, and another one that will end in failure with nothing to show for it But that is the very nature of Research in basic hard sciences. We have to have systems in place which have such monetary/time losses factored in. The problem today is that Academia is using the same "short-term gains" yardstick used in the Industry which is completely wrong. The nature of the subject should dictate your manner of funding it.
- ksk 6y ago
  >We have to have systems in place which have such monetary/time losses factored in. Sure, everyone agrees with that. Can you propose a model that will work?
  - rramadass 6y ago
    The "University Framework" already exists to support such a system. The problem is that Industry has infiltrated itself into the system and turned the "Research Objective" into "Profit Motive". This has to be eradicated completely. Others in this same thread have also proposed some ideas and i will try to add to it; * Establish a network of "Research Universities" from each country in the World (sort of UN of Universities). The poorer countries can be partially funded by richer countries. This is to ensure that knowledge flows are not constrained due to lack of resources. * Research in the various Sciences have to be clearly identified as "Critical" or Not. The former is funded and managed completely differently than the latter. For example, research in vaccines/cancer is considered critical while research in "battery chemistry"(currently a hot area of research) is not. In the former case, all we keep tabs on is "some progress" and not necessarily an external deadline i.e. researchers are given the freedom to keep working on it with self-imposed and self-defined milestones. * All "money making" (eg. licenses/patents/royalties etc.) from Research is to be shared between Researchers, Institution and Industry (where applicable). * All "Research" in Universities get funding from the following sources, some with constraints and some without; ----- 1) Govt. grant as part of yearly budget with no strings attached. This is taxpayer money and any output is available to the public. ----- 2) Academia/Industry tie-up (eg. VC/Angel money) where all stakeholders needs are considered. However if the research is considered "critical" Industry needs may be waived. ----- 3) "Corporate Social Responsibility"(CSR) money from all large corporations/rich folks etc. ----- 4) Revenue/Profit from University "businesses" like Education etc. * Finally, No "Research" project should ever be overseen by purely "Administrative/Finance/MBA" types. Only Core Domain Experts should be granted oversight with the above mentioned helping as needed.

chriskanan 6y ago

Academia gives you six years to publish top-tier papers and obtain significant grant funding to impress one's peers. Failure to do that and have a mediocre, but not an abysmal, teaching record means dismissal (i.e., not being on the tenure track any longer - not necessarily being fired outright). In general, the system works okay, but one has to play the game. Winning grants is extraordinarily hard, even more so today than it was in the 1980s. To me it is unclear whether to blame the university, the grant agency reviewers, or her writing (one must make a convincing arguments to the reviewers, which is very hard if one is breaking with dogma). Her university peers may not have been able to see how revolutionary her work was at the time and so they fell back on the metrics. Getting tenure is extremely difficult. I applied for it this year at my university...

voxl 6y ago
If the system disregards revolutionary research because it's too hard to understand (which, by the way, there is evidence that established members of a field actively block revolutionary research because they "know" it won't work out) then it is the system that should be changed.
- rramadass 6y ago
  Well said!
- NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
  Sure, but universities are old and stodgy. Maybe it’s people who want to be professors in the first place that should be changed. With hindsight, moving to BioNTech seems like the best decision she could have made, and now she can enjoy the final laugh.

8bitsrule 6y ago

Also another case where "Researchers’ patents are often held by the institutions where they work." I wonder what the law is around that ... what percentage are the discoverers legally entitled to? If the answer is obscene, what efforts have been made to fix that?

sarpeedo 6y ago
Not a lawyer but I've participated in "technology transfer" at a university. At University of Washington one of the standard deals is 27% for the inventors (for patent license revenue). Of course every deal is negotiable. When you use university resources such as lab space and students the university will take some financial share. When it comes to equity stake in a startup the deal negotiated becomes much more tricky of course and the university may maintain an equity stake in the company in exchange for exclusive licensing of the patents. https://comotion.uw.edu/what-we-do/startup-related-services/how-proceeds-are-distributed-to-inventors/ https://comotion.uw.edu/what-we-do/startup-related-services/... http://www.washington.edu/admin/rules/policies/APS/59.04.html http://www.washington.edu/admin/rules/policies/APS/59.04.htm...

poxwole 6y ago

The result of running universities like a business. People are more concerned about publications and conference and funding than actual science which is slow and unremarkable most of the time.

Kurbelwelle 6y ago

I don't understand why the current failure of at least the US university system to actually promote long-term thinking and research isn't a bigger issue. How many people's lives could have been saved by research that was never done? How might society have been improved? Like, there's literally millions (billions?) of human lives on the line.

ignoramous 6y ago

Funny how biases work. It is "Philly" when positive. "Immigrant" when negative.

gogopuppygogo 6y ago

Reminds me of the Doctor who was ostracized by the medical community for his theories on what causes an Ulcer. He ended up giving himself an Ulcer to show he could cure it. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-doctor-who-drank-infectious-broth-gave-himself-an-ulcer-and-solved-a-medical-mystery https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/the-doctor-who-drank...

nyokodo 6y ago

If there is not an appropriate award that already exists then it should be created and then given to her and any other unsung heroes in this area. If no institution does it then it should be crowd funded and presented by a new foundation. I will donate!!

signal11 6y ago
There is some talk of a Nobel Prize in chemistry for Dr Katalin Karikó and her collaborator Dr Drew Weissman. From what I’ve heard, mRNA as a technique is quite an advance — if true then they deserve all the accolades they get to make up for the years of fruitless, unappreciated research.
- rramadass 6y ago
  Agree 100%. All the people involved in this vaccine should be given the Nobel in Medicine/Chemistry.

hollander 6y ago

> Penn officials declined to comment on their relationship with Karikó, previous or current. “We are unable to discuss specifics about faculty or staff employment matters,” spokesperson Stephen Maccarthy told Billy Penn. Privacy is the such a convenient and perfect excuse for institutions to cover up their mess.

trianglem 6y ago
Put away your pitchfork, this demotion was in the 90s
- varjag 6y ago
  That mostly means we could have mRNA vaccines a decade earlier.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    perhaps, or maybe it means we would have mRNA vaccines decades later.
    - NE2z2T9qi 6y ago
      Exactly. Her moving to BioNTech seems to have been the best outcome possible... even though I completely understand her sourness at Penn. But it sounds like she’ll get the last laugh and can call out Penn for its lack of vision.
      - s1artibartfast 6y ago
        yeah, and it is entirely possible that developing mRNA technology simply wasn't a good fit for Penn, even if it was long term viable and within their ability to fund. It it seems pretty unfair to say that "the school wasn’t very supportive of the scientist who led the charge." They gave her 6 years runway while she tried to find external funding and get the technology off the ground before kicking her off tenure, and kept her on payroll until the she made her breakthrough another 10 years later. If I understand the timeline right, she started at Penn in 89, was kicked off tenure in 95, published her major mRNA paper in 2005, then left Penn to be a senior VP in 2013.