It has been estimated that in the first six months of 2021, mRNA-based vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 have saved 280,000 lives in the US alone and prevented well over a million hospitalizations. It is the scientific body of work of biochemist Katalin Karikó, Senior Vice President at BioNTech SE, that made these vaccines possible. Karikó’s work into nucleoside modifications to suppress immunogenicity of RNA provided the key to successful vaccines and an exit from the global COVID pandemic. In this episode, Ushma Neill discusses this and much more with Dr. Karikó.