How this woman may have discovered one of the biggest silver linings in the pandemic.

Katalin Kariko, the daughter of a butcher, was laughed at for decades but now the world has turned to her for a possible answer to Cancer, HIV and Malaria.

It may be hard to see now but COVID-19 might have an incredible silver lining.

The lasting legacy of this pandemic could end up leading to a new way to treat HIV, Malaria and even cancer.

Before we delve into where science is headed, we need to trace the life of one incredible woman - the daughter of a butcher who grew up in Hungary.

Her name is Katalin Kariko.

In her 20s, she moved to the US after getting married and having a baby.

But - for better or worse - she was also married to her job.

Her husband says when you take into account the endless hours she put in at work, it amounted to her earning about a dollar an hour.

Nadia Levin from Research Australia says that Katalin struggled for years to get any decent funding for her ideas.

“She was applying for grant after grant after grant. She kept getting knocked back, getting told this is just too far-fetched.”

For decades barely anyone paid attention to this biochemist.

In fact, she says, many people laughed at her.

That was until recently when she caught the attention of BioNTech- the maker of the Pfizer vaccine.

Katalin Karikó in her younger years in a lab Source: Supplied

Associate Professor Archa Fox from the University of Western Australia says the use of mRNA technology could be revolutionary for medicine.

“We've been interested in mRNA for a long time, but we've never managed to get it taken up by cells,” Professor Fox says.

The way this liquid, this fatty coat is allowing the mRNA to be protected and taken up by cells, it has been a bit of a holy grail actually.”

How mRNA vaccines work

Before the pandemic hit, traditional vaccines worked by injecting a weakened or inactive virus to trigger an immune response. 

But mRNA research has changed all of that.

This is how it works: the mRNA is a little messenger which temporarily makes your own body produce a tiny and harmless part of the virus. With COVID-19, that’s the so-called spike protein.

Your immune system then figures out how to fight and remove that protein so that if it ever gets infected by the actual virus, it can find and kill it much quicker.

“This really is revolutionary for the medical world and it is genuinely a disruptive technology for the medical industry,” says Associate Professor Archa Fox from the University of Western Australia.

And she says that’s because the technology can be quickly modified to tackle different diseases.

A health worker reaches for a vile of mRNA vaccine Source: Supplied

Using mRNA to treat other diseases

There are a number of studies and trials happening around the world looking at mRNA as a possible treatment for malaria, a treatment for HIV, Multiple Sclerosis and Tuberculosis.

Associate Professor Archa Fox believes in a year or two mRNA could be used as an immunotherapy treatment for cancer, with clinical trials happening right now. 

“So the idea is that your immune system would kind of weaken your tumor and allow it to kind of open up and have the chemotherapy go in and attack it,” Associate Professor Fox says.

Why hasn’t mRNA been used before now?

So why hasn’t mRNA come onto the scene before now? 

The simple answer is dollars. Noone wanted to invest.

The irony now is governments everywhere are chucking billions at it. Australia wants a slice of the action too, the government says it's going to spend 1.5 billion dollars to kickstart Australia’s own capacity to manufacture mRNA treatments and vaccines.

The CEO of Research Australia, Nadia Levin, says the mRNA market is predicted to grow over the coming years.

“By the time we get to 2024, the market would be worth 5.5 billion, and obviously that has potential to grow.”