The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 for
“The development of Click chemistry and Bioorthogonal chemistry”
To :-
- Carolyn R. Bertozzi
Stanford University, CA, USA
- K. Barry Sharpless
Scripps Research, La Jolla, CA, USA
(This is Sharpless second Nobel prize)
- Morten Meldal
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
A moment to be proud of for Americans!
For a very long time, chemists have been motivated by the ambition to create complex molecules. This has frequently involved generating artificial versions of natural compounds with therapeutic qualities in pharmaceutical research. This has produced numerous admirable molecular constructs, but this is a typically time and money intense activity. But it is now possible with Click Chemistry.
In Click Chemistry molecules snap together fast and firmly without the need for a long, complicated process and too many unwanted by-products.
Click Chemistry has major application in field of including cancer treatment.
Analogy of Click Chemistry is like fastening a seat belt where click sound confirms lock.
Sharpless coined the term Click Chemistry in year 2000.
Meldal came up with Triazole structure and Bertozzi took it on next level by showing it’s working model inside living organism. Bertozzi coined the term Bioortthogonal which means – Any chemical reaction that can occur inside of living systems without interfering with native biochemical processes.
As a practical use it can be used in bio-chemistry to develop drugs without metal ions which cause toxicity in humans.
The molecules thus discovered are of a new type that perform in two areas – affecting the ability of cancer cells to undergo metastasis, and targeting the aggressive stem cells. This opens the door to a new class of treatment.
However, this new pharmaceutical drug can’t be produced immediately in the next few years but once formulated could be used to address serious problems in medicine, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Antimicrobial Resistance and Cancer.
