Three Scientists Awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Research on Click Chemistry and Bioorthogonal Chemistry.
Scientists honored at the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. (Photo: Nobel Prize)
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that scientists Carolyn R. Bertozzi (USA), Morten Meldal (Denmark), and K. Barry Sharpless (USA) are the recipients of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry at 4:45 PM on October 5 (Hanoi time).
Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal laid the groundwork for click chemistry, in which molecular building blocks combine quickly and efficiently. Carolyn Bertozzi elevated click chemistry to a new level and began applying it in living organisms.
Chemists have long sought to construct increasingly complex molecules. In pharmaceutical research, this often involves recreating natural molecules with medicinal properties, leading to many desirable molecular structures that are often time-consuming and costly to produce.
In the field of chemistry, click reactions have high applicability in various areas such as polymer materials (synthesizing dendrimers – tree-like polymers), in biology (synthesizing polymer chains onto macromolecules like enzymes or proteins to create functional hybrid materials), and in medicine (synthesizing functional polymers that change shape according to environmental conditions such as pH or temperature…).
“This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry focuses on methods that simplify and ease the problem. Useful molecules can be built in a more straightforward manner,” said Johan Åqvist, chair of the Nobel Chemistry Committee.
The Nobel Prize is an international award established by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm since 1901, based on the estate of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor and entrepreneur.
The prize is awarded annually to individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions in the fields of Medicine, Chemistry, Physics, Literature, and Peace. In 1968, the Central Bank of Sweden established the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Each award consists of a medal, a personal certificate, and a monetary prize. From 1901 to 2021, the prize has been awarded 609 times to 975 individuals and organizations worldwide.
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan for discovering catalysts used in the pharmaceutical industry and photovoltaic cells.
