Abstract
For at least a century, an often-debated topic is what is of primary importance to make breakthrough in biomedical research: originality/creativity or sophisticated methods/equipment. We present here a short historical overview arguing about the importance of creativity, originality, and persistence. Namely, the best living example of this is the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Drs. Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for the invention and development of mRNA-based vaccine against COVID-19. Katalin Kariko had a life-long obsession to use mRNA for cancer therapy, but when the structure of SARS-CoV-2 was announced, she shifted her interest to develop an mRNA-based vaccine against the new virus. But since the mRNA molecule is notoriously unstable and easily degraded if injected intracellularly, she teamed up with Dr. Weissman who was working on techniques to deliver mRNA molecules intracellularly. This creative teamwork with original ideas of vaccine development illustrates what other creative scientists, like Alexander Flemming, Hans Selye, Leon Popielski and James Black discovered in their fields. The sad part of the story is that only two of these scientists got the Nobel Prize.