U.S. Patent 8,748,089 on pseudouridine-containing RNA molecules was granted to Karikó and co-inventors.
On June 10, 2014, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted U.S. Patent 8,748,089, covering pseudouridine-containing RNA molecules and their methods of production, to Katalin Karikó and her co-inventors.
This patent expanded the protective scope around the foundational modified-mRNA technology first patented in 2012, covering additional applications and refinements of the pseudouridine substitution technique that reduces innate immune activation against synthetic RNA.
By this time, Karikó had left her position at the University of Pennsylvania and joined the German biotechnology company BioNTech as senior vice president, where she continued to develop mRNA technology for therapeutic and vaccine applications, still largely outside the mainstream spotlight of biomedical research.
The 2014 patent grant further solidified the intellectual property estate that would later prove essential when BioNTech partnered with Pfizer to rapidly develop an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine in 2020. This patent, like its predecessor, exemplifies how sustained, incremental patent protection of a scientifically unfashionable technology ultimately yielded one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the century.