Nobel Prize in Chemistry won by three scientists for developing simple reactions
Their work known as click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions is used to make cancer drugs, explore cells and track biological processes.
Scientists Carolyn R Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K Barry Sharpless on Wednesday won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for development of technologies known as click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which gives the award for chemistry, said in a statement that their work is now used globally to explore cells and track biological processes.
Click chemistry enables molecular building blocks snap together quickly to create new desired compounds. “Using bioorthogonal reactions, researchers have improved the targeting of cancer pharmaceuticals, which are now being tested in clinical trials,” the award-giving body said.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences noted that this year’s award is about making difficult processes easier.
“This year’s Prize in Chemistry deals with not overcomplicating matters, instead working with what is easy and simple,” said Johan Aqvist, the chair of the chemistry committee. “Functional molecules can be built even by taking a straightforward route.”
Sharpless and Meldal have been credited for laying the foundation for click chemistry, enabling fast and straightforward reactions.
Sharpless is affiliated with Scripps Research, California. He previously won a Nobel Prize in 2001. Meldal is at the University of Copenhagen.
Bertozzi, from Stanford University in California, won the prize for taking the click chemistry concept to a new dimension and utilising the process in living organisms.
The winners will share prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor.
The chemistry prize is the third Nobel given this week. On Tuesday, scientists Alain Aspect, John F Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their experiments with entangled photons. A day before that, Swedish scientist Svante Paabo won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discoveries about the evolution of the human race.
The other awards will be given in the fields of literature, peace and economics.
By David Keyton and Frank Jordans The Associated Press
Posted October 5, 2022
Three scientists from the United States and Denmark were jointly awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a way of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to design better medicines.
Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless were cited for their work on click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions, which are used to make cancer drugs, map DNA and create materials that are tailored to a specific purpose.
“It’s all about snapping molecules together,” said Johan Aqvist, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that announced the winners Wednesday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
Sharpless, who previously won a Nobel Prize in 2001 and is now the fifth person to receive the award twice, first proposed the idea for connecting molecules using chemical “buckles” around the turn of the millennium, said Aqvist.
“The problem was to find good chemical buckles,” he said. “They have to react with each other easily and specifically.”
Meldal, based at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Sharpless, who is affiliated with Scripps Research, California, independently found the first such candidates that would easily snap together with each other but not with other molecules, leading to applications in the manufacture of medicines and polymers.
Bertozzi, who is based at Stanford University in California, “took click chemistry to a new level,” the Nobel panel said.
She found a way to make click chemistry work inside living organisms without disrupting them, establishing a new method known as bioorthogonal reactions. Such reactions are now used to explore cells, track biological processes and design experimental cancer drugs that work in a more targeted fashion.
Bertozzi said she was “absolutely stunned” to receive the prize.
“I’m still not entirely positive that it’s real, but it’s getting realer by the minute,” she said.
Last year the prize was awarded to scientists Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan for finding an ingenious and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that the Nobel panel said is “already benefiting humankind greatly.”
A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.
Three scientists jointly won the prize in physics Tuesday. Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger had shown that tiny particles can retain a connection with each other even when separated, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, that can be used for specialized computing and to encrypt information.
The awards continue with literature on Thursday. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.
The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.
No comments:
Post a Comment