Karikó, a vice president of BioNTech, which has led research on mRNA-based medicine since the 1990s, has played a major role in developing new vaccination strategies which have been used in the fight against Covid-19.

Karikó was nominated for the Golden Plate by Nobel laureate scientists Frances Hamilton Arnold, Jennifer Anne Doudna, Robert Joseph Lefkowitz and James Patrick Allison, Szeged University said.

She received the award at a gala dinner in Los Angeles on December 23, it added.