Nobel Prize awarded to 3 chemists who made molecules click

Nobel Prize awarded to 3 chemists who made molecules ‘click’

Three scientists were jointly awarded this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for developing a way of "snapping molecules together" that can be used to explore cells, map

DNA and design drugs that can target diseases such as cancer more precisely.Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal were cited for

their work on click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions."It’s all about snapping molecules together," said Johan Aqvist, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that

announced the winners at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.Sharpless, 81, who previously won a Nobel Prize in 2001 and is now the fifth person to receive the award twice, first

proposed the idea of connecting molecules using chemical "buckles" around the turn of the millennium, Aqvist said."The problem was to find good chemical buckles," he said. "They

have to react with each other easily and specifically." The winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - Caroline R. Bertozzi of the United States, Morten Meldal of Denmark and

K. Barry Sharpless of the United States - are announced during a press conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022. (Christine

Olsson /TT News Agency via AP)Meldal, 68, based at the University of Copenhagen and Sharpless, who is affiliated with Scripps Research in 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, 55, who

is based at Stanford University "took click chemistry to a new level," the Nobel panel said, by finding a way to make the process work inside living organisms without disrupting

them.The goal is "doing chemistry inside human patients to make sure that drugs go to the right place and stay away from the wrong place," she said, speaking by phone at a news

conference following the announcement.NOBEL PRIZE GOES TO 3 PHYSICISTS FOR WORK ON QUANTUM SCIENCEThe award was a shock, she said. "I’m still not entirely positive that it’s

real, but it’s getting realer by the minute."Later, speaking to The Associated Press by Zoom, Bertozzi said one of the first people she called after being wakened by the call

around 2 a.m. was her father, William Bertozzi, a retired physicist and night owl, who was still awake watching TV."Dad, turn down the TV, I have something to tell you," she said

she told him. After she assured him nothing was wrong, he guessed the news. "You won it, didn't you?" Stanford Professor Carolyn Bertozzi fields congratulatory emails shortly after Find Out More