Award-winning tool kit for building molecules like Lego bricks. 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Chemists Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, split the prize evenly for developers of click chemistry and bio-orthogonal chemistry, according to the Royal Swedish Science. The Academy announced in October. 5 at a press conference in Stockholm. These tools enable scientists to easily build complex molecules in the laboratory and in vivo.
Olof Ramström, a chemist at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a member of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry, said: Applications include building drug molecules, polymers, new materials, and tracking biomolecules between cells.
“We are already at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to applications,” says Angela Wilson, president of the American Chemical Society. “I think this chemistry will revolutionize medicine in so many areas.”
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About 20 years ago Sharpless introduced “click chemistry”. This is how he easily and quickly joins two compounds using specific connector molecules. However, finding Lego-like connector molecules that can be combined through chemical reactions has been challenging. Sharpless and Meldal worked independently to find a solution.
By adding a bit of copper to a mixture containing two other small molecules, called azides and alkynes, scientists were able to rapidly combine the two molecules into a ring-shaped chemical. Without copper, the molecules would eventually bind, but at a slower rate, Ramström said.
The reaction soon “gained a great deal of interest across chemistry and related fields,” he added. Scientists later discovered several other molecules that could snap in a similar way, but that first reaction is considered “the pinnacle of the click reaction.”
But while catalysis with copper might work well in a glass beaker, the metal can be toxic to living cells. , scientists can now engineer chemical reactions inside living organisms without compromising normal cellular function.
Bertozzi tricked the cells into incorporating click chemicals into the sugars that decorated their surfaces. When scientists expose these cells to another click chemical, a type of alkyne, the two are able to bind together, much like the molecules in the Sharpless-Meldal reaction. By attaching alkynes to molecules that glow green, scientists can illuminate the surface of cells.
“Imagine that you can attach glowing molecules to biomolecules in living cells. Then you can follow them through a microscope to see where they are and how they move. This is what Carolyn Bertozzi did. That’s it.” Johan Åqvist, a theoretical chemist at Uppsala University in Sweden and chairman of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry, said:
Leslie Vosshall, a neuroscientist at New York City’s Rockefeller University and vice president and chief scientific officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said Bertozzi’s specialty was the study of “very tricky” sugar molecules. Easy methods exist for interrogating DNA, RNA, and proteins, but not so much for sugars, she says. “Sugars are the dark matter of cells.”
By targeting specific sugars on the cell surface, scientists can develop new therapeutics. For example, Bertozzi and her colleagues were able to target and inactivate sugars that were helping tumor cells hide from her T cells in the body (SN: March 21, 2017).
HHMI investigator Bertozzi said: 59th woman to win a Nobel Prize since 1901, and is only the eighth person to win the Chemistry Prize. In 2021, Emmanuel Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna will become the last women to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on the gene-editing tool known as CRISPR (10/7/21).
“Carolyn … is one of the surprisingly few women in chemical biology,” Vosshall says. “Her lab was a creative place that inspired and launched women chemists.”
After being awakened by the news around 3:00 a.m. Pacific time, Bertozzi said: I’m sitting here and I can barely breathe. To call the midnight call a shock would be an understatement, she added. ”
Bertozzi, Meldal and Sharpless share the prize — 10 million Swedish kronor, approximately $917,000. The award is Sharpless’s second Nobel Prize, which he shared in 2001 for his research. Development of catalysts for oxidation reactions.
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