Fireside chat with Drs. Pieter Cullis and Katalin Karikó, moderated by Janet Rossant at MaRS Impact Health 2022

In April 2022, Drs. Katalin Karikó, senior vice president of BioNTech in Germany, and Pieter Cullis, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of British Columbia, were awarded the Canada Gairdner International Award, one of the top global prizes in biomedicine, for their pioneering work developing nucleoside-modified mRNA and lipid nanoparticle (LNP) drug delivery: the foundational technologies for the highly effective COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

As part of MaRS Impact Health on May 26, 2022, Dr. Janet Rossant, Gairdner Foundation president and scientific director, sat down with Drs. Cullis and Karikó to discuss how the two scientists, alongside fellow 2022 award winner, Dr. Drew Weissman, produced one of the most consequential and widely used medical interventions in a generation: messenger RNA vaccines against COVID-19.