«It was a one-way ticket,» she told Business Insider. «We didn’t know anybody.»
It was 1985. The family was moving from Hungary to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so Karikó could take a postdoctoral position at Temple University. They were only permitted to exchange $100, but Karikó found a workaround: She hid extra cash – £900 British pounds – in her daughter’s teddy bear. The money had come from selling the family’s car on the black market.
In a way, Karikó’s entire career has been based on this kind of clever solution. In 2005, she discovered a way to configure messenger RNA – a molecule that kickstarts the production of proteins – so that it slipped past the body’s natural defenses, unannounced.