Nobel Prize in Chemistry Goes to 3 Pioneers of Click Chemistry

Stockholm: Three scientists jointly shared this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing ‘an ingenious tool for building molecules’.m The trio Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless has won the award for advancing the fields of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry. 

Hans Ellegren, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the awardees of the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

Sharpless and Medal pioneered the concept for a functional form of chemistry - click chemistry - which enables fast and straightforward reactions, where ‘molecular building blocks snap together quickly.’

Bertozzi took ‘click chemistry to a new level’, by developing click reactions that work inside living organisms ( or bioorthogonal reactions), the committee said. 

First celebration! @ChemKUniversity @UCPH_Research @NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/pQAytyP3U2

— Jiwoong Lee (@TheLeeLab_Chem) October 5, 2022

This is the second Nobel prize for Sharpless and he became the fifth individual to be awarded two Nobel prizes since the award started in 1901. 

The other individuals are John Bardeen who won the Physics prize twice, Marie Curie, who won Physics and Chemistry, Linus Pauling who won Chemistry and Peace and Frederick Sanger who won the Chemistry prize twice.

Also Read: Three Scientists Share Nobel Prize in Physics for Quantum Information Science

The 2021 Nobel Prize in chemistry went to German Benjamin List and Scottish-born David MacMillan for their in creating new tools to build molecules. These molecules would be helpful in developing new drugs as well as in areas such as plastics.