Nobel Prize In chemistry 2022:
The 2022 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Carolyn R Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K Barry Sharpless “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”
- Sharpless was the first scientist to work on ‘click chemistry’ – a branch of science that explores the assembly of molecules.
- Meldal and Dr. Sharpless – independently of each other – presented the copper-catalysed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC), a reaction that is now widely used in fields like medicinal chemistry. The CuAAC reaction is an improved form of the azide-alkyne Huisgen cycloaddition.
- Bertozzi improved the field further by developing click reactions that work inside living organisms.
- These bioorthogonal reactions do not disrupt the normal chemistry of the cell.
Click chemistry:
- Click chemistry is a functional field where molecules snap together quickly and efficiently – literally like a click.
- It is defined as a “set of powerful, highly reliable, and selective reactions for the rapid synthesis of useful new compounds and combinatorial libraries through heteroatom links”.
