Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Scientists have managed to simplify the creation of molecules

Julia Tisler, ERR

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Americans Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless, as well as to Dane Morten Meldal. The scientists were awarded for "developing methods of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry".

We are talking about innovative methods of organic synthesis, which greatly simplify and make more effective the creation of new compounds, including drugs.

Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal laid the foundation for a functional form of chemistry — click chemistry, in which molecular building blocks are quickly and efficiently connected to each other. Carolyn Bertozzi has taken the chemistry of clicks to a new level and started using it in working with living organisms, according to the website The Nobel Committee.

Chemists have long been driven by the desire to build increasingly complex molecules. In pharmaceutical research, this is often associated with the artificial recreation of natural molecules with medicinal properties. Scientists have learned how to create complex molecular structures, but the process is usually time-consuming and very expensive.

Barry Sharpless, who has already received the second Nobel Prize in Chemistry, in 2000 came up with the concept of click chemistry, which is a form of simple and reliable chemistry, where reactions proceed quickly, and the appearance of undesirable by-products is excluded.

Shortly thereafter, Morten Meldal and Barry Sharpless—independently of each other—introduced what is now the jewel of click chemistry: a copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition. This is an elegant and effective chemical reaction that is currently widely used, for example, in the development of pharmaceuticals.

"Click chemistry" is a branch of science dealing with the study of ways to connect molecules into a single whole. The difficulty lies in the fact that the bonds between the molecules are not only stable and strong, but also neutral — that is, they have no effect on the chemical properties of the resulting compound. 

The Nobel laureates managed to solve this problem with the help of a carbon-nitrogen bond. A chain of three consecutive nitrogen atoms (azide) is "hung" on one of the connected molecules, and two carbon atoms (alkyne) on the other. In the presence of a catalyst (copper ions), the two parts interlock into a stable ring.

Carolyn Bertozzi has taken click chemistry to a new level. With the help of her developments, it became possible to conduct targeted chemical reactions on the surface of living cells without damaging them. Today, the method developed by her is used all over the world to study cells and track biological processes. Using bioorthogonal reactions, the researchers improved the targeting of targeted cancer drugs that are currently undergoing clinical trials.

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