The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Barry Sharpless, Morten Meldal and Carolyn Bertozzi for their contributions to the field of click chemistry. Click chemistry simplifies the process of producing chemical compounds in the laboratory. Among the contents of the field of conventional chemistry is to produce all natural chemical compounds in the laboratory in the required amount.
The various reactions and steps taken to produce chemicals in the laboratory waste resources and cause unnecessary reactions to occur. Barry Sharpless proposed that existing smaller molecules be linked using nitrogen or oxygen atom bridges. These molecular blocks are connected to produce the desired chemical compounds with a lower waste of resources. He also invented click chemistry in 2001.
Morten Meldal discovered the copper catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction which is synonymous with click chemistry. This reaction produces triazole structures that are useful in the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. Trizole is formed when azide and alkyne are connected using a copper catalyst. If chemists want to connect two molecules, they just need to put an azide moiety in the first molecule and an alkyne moiety in the second molecule. When copper is introduced, these two molecules will connect through a triazole structure.
Finally Carolyn Bertozzi realized the potential of click chemistry in medicine. But copper is toxic to living cells which makes the copper catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction unsuitable for use. Based on his research, Bertozzi created a strain-promoted alkyne-azide cycloaddition that allows molecules to be connected without the use of copper.
This allows him to produce antibodies that attack glycans that protect cancer tumors from the body's immune system. The first antibodies attack glycans on cancer tumors. After the first resistance is overcome, a second antibody can be introduced by attaching it to the first antibody using click chemistry. It is hoped that this will lead to effective cancer treatment in the future.
Due to the efforts of Barry Sharpless, Morten Meldal and Carolyn Bertozzi in the field of click chemistry, all three were awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Barry Sharpless also became the fifth individual in the history of the Nobel Prize to win it twice after John Bardeen, Marie Curie, Linus Pauling and Frederick Sanger. The first time he received the Nobel Prize was in 2001 also in the field of chemistry.