Two Americans and a Dane win chemistry Nobel

Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and K. Barry Sharpless of Scripps Research won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry,” methods that have been applied in drug development and studying disease.

Click chemistry, true to its name, “clicks” together molecules much more easily and precisely than traditional chemical reactions.

Sharpless coined the idea of click chemistry around 2000, and Meldal and Sharpless developed click reactions independently of each other shortly after. Bertozzi, interested in studying the sugar molecules called glycans on the surfaces of cells, a few years later developed click reactions that were possible without the copper catalyst, which allowed the reaction to occur in cells and the visualization of these glycans — which she termed “bioorthogonal chemistry.”

“Dr. Bertozzi has given us the tools to understand and manipulate sugars, not just in a test tube but in living cells,” Eric Rubin, editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, said.

“The tools she has made open up new avenues for understanding how cells interact with each other and their environments and offer up new avenues for intervening in diseases such as cancer and infections.”

Hans Ellegren, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the winners Wednesday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

Reached by phone right after the prize announcement, Bertozzi said she was stunned. “I’m still not entirely positive that it’s real,” she said, “but it’s getting realer by the minute.”

This award is the second Nobel for Sharpless, who won shared the chemistry prize in 2001 “for his work on chirally catalyzed oxidation reactions.” He’s now the fifth person to achieve the double honor, along with Marie Curie, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen, and Frederick Sanger.

A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with the award in medicine honoring a scientist who unlocked the secrets of Neanderthal DNA. Three scientists jointly won the prize in physics Tuesday for showing that tiny particles can retain a connection with each other even when separated.

They continue with chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Oct. 10.