Scientists Carolyn Bertozzi, Morton Meldel and Barry Sharpless won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for discovering reactions that combine molecular building blocks to efficiently create new desired compounds.
Technologies known as click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry are now used globally to explore cells and track biological processes, the awarding body said in a statement.
“Using bioorthogonal reactions, researchers have improved the targeting of cancer drugs, which are now being tested in clinical trials.”
The prize was awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($915,072).
The third of the prizes to be awarded in six consecutive days on Saturday, the chemistry Nobel follows those announced earlier this week for medicine and physics.
Sharpless joins an elite band of scientists who have won two Nobel Prizes. Others are John Bardeen who won the physics prize twice, Marie Curie who won both physics and chemistry, Linus Pauling who won both chemistry and peace and Frederick Singer who won the chemistry prize twice.
“I’m absolutely stunned, I’m sitting here and I can barely breathe,” Bertozzi said from California when the Academy reached out by telephone with news of his win.
The 2021 Chemistry Prize was won by German Benjamin List and Scottish-born David McMillan for developing new tools for making molecules, helping new medicines as well as fields such as plastics.
The prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were established by the bequest of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel, himself a chemist, and have been awarded since 1901. Later economics was added.
The awards are given out every year with few interruptions, mainly for World Wars, and no breaks for the COVID-19 pandemic although most competitions and events have been suspended or temporarily on. The line was moved.
