Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022: Winners Carolyn Berdozzi, Morton Meldal and Barry Sharples for their development of click and bioorthogonal chemistry

Winners’ research has allowed to improve the orientation of anti-cancer drug products.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in its press release that chemists have long been driven by a desire to create more complex molecules.

In pharmaceutical research, it involves the synthetic recreation of natural molecules with medicinal properties.

“This has led to many admirable molecular structures, but they are generally time-consuming and difficult to manufacture,” the report says.

“This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry does not deal with very complex problems, but with something easy and simple,” said Johan Aqvist, chairman of the Chemistry Nobel Committee.

To understand that, think about how Lego works. Some pieces have bumps and some holes. You press them together and they click to join.

Professor Alison Hulme of the University of Edinburgh in the UK explains that the same process applies to click chemistry.

“The two chemical partners are specially designed to bind to each other, so when they interact in the right environment, they click together,” he told the BBC.

But it couldn’t be used in cells at first – essential for understanding the disease – because it uses copper, which kills the cells.

Professor Berdozzi’s groundbreaking discovery put click chemistry to work in cells.

Their mission, Hulme explains, is that scientists “can do the chemistry inside the human body to make sure drugs go to the right place and stay out of the wrong place.”

The concept was coined by Barry Sharples in 2000. After some time, Morton Meldel And Sharpless, independently, presented what is now considered the crown jewel of click chemistry: the copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition.

“Click chemistry has brought enormous advances The Chemistry, Nanotechnology and Materials Science“, on the other hand says Raluca M. Fratila, a researcher at the University of Zaragoza in Spain.

Hector Busto Sancirion, a member of the biochemistry research group at the University of La Rioja, explains that click chemistry is a “fundamental science”.

“As so often happens, laid the foundation for so-called bioorthogonal chemistry“Caroline Berdozzi has used this method, developed by Sharpless, to perform chemical reactions in living organisms with enormous potential for developing new drugs,” says Busto.

In 2004, Berdozzi and his colleagues pioneered click reactions that did not require copper. When working with organisms, Excess metal can be toxic to cells and estimate your metabolism.

In this way, chemicals can modify molecules in organisms without interfering with normal cell functions.

Such reactions allowed Bertozzi to tag molecules found on the cell surface called glycans with green fluorescent labels.

Berdozzi showed that his discovery could be used to monitor glycans, for example, in tumor cells, and found that Certain glycans protect tumors from the human immune systemSo a new drug could be developed by blocking this mechanism.

Several researchers have begun developing selective antibodies that target different types of tumors, explains the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

These antibodies are currently being tested in clinical trials and may also be used in inflammatory diseases. Impact Inside million patients All over the world.

Caroline R. Bertozzi Born in 1966 in USA. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1993. It is present Ann D. at Stanford University in California. and Robert M. Bass Laboratory Professor.

Morton Meldel Born 1954 in Denmark. In 1986 he completed his PhD at the Technical University of Lyngby, Denmark. This is Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

K. Barry Sharples Born in 1941 in Philadelphia, USA. He received his doctorate from Stanford University in 1968. This is Professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

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