BERTOCCI Caroline
American chemist Carolyn Bertozzi was born on October 10, 1966 in Boston (Massachusetts, USA).
She grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. Her father was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Caroline Bertozzi received her B.A. in chemistry from Harvard University (1988) and her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley (1993).
She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in cellular immunology at the University of California, San Francisco in 1995.
From 1996-2004 she worked at the University of California and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and from 2000-2004 she also worked at the University of California at San Francisco.
From 2000-2004, he was a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
In 2006, Bertozzi headed the Molecular Foundry at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (California), which was engaged in nanoscience. She has been involved in this project since its inception as director of the Institute’s Center for Biological Nanostructures.
Caroline Bertozzi’s research contributed to a number of innovations, in particular, the invention of bioorthogonal reactions (capable of occurring inside living systems without interfering with natural biochemical processes). The method allowed for the first imaging study of glycans in a living organism.
Since 2015, she has been working at Stanford University, where she joined the interdisciplinary Institute of Chemistry, Engineering, and Medicine for Human Health (ChEM-H).
In the 2000s, Caroline Bertozzi co-founded a number of biotech companies, including Redwood Biosciences (2008, acquired by Catalent Pharma Solutions in 2014), Enable Biosciences (2014), InterVenn Biosciences (2017), OliLux Biosciences and Lycia Therapeutics (both – 2019), etc. In 2017, Bertozzi was elected to the board of directors of Eli Lilly and Company, a large American pharmaceutical company.
Bertozzi’s research interests are chemistry and biology, with an emphasis on the study of cell surface sugars. Her research group (Bertozzi Group) is looking at changes in cell surface glycosylation associated with diseases such as cancer, tuberculosis, COVID-19. Her group is also studying NGly1 deficiency (a rare genetic disease).
Caroline Bertozzi is a member of a number of scientific academies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2003), the National Academy of Sciences (2005).
She has received numerous awards: the President’s Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) (2000), the Irving Segal Award (2002), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lemelson Award (2010) and others.
On October 5, 2022, Caroline Bertozzi, together with scientists Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldahl, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a technique for the rapid synthesis of chemical compounds.
SHARPESS Barry
American chemist Barry Sharpless was born on April 28, 1941 in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, USA).
In 1963 he graduated from Dartmouth College, where he studied chemistry. In 1968 he received his doctorate from Stanford University.
He completed post-dissertation internships at Stanford and Harvard Universities.
In 1970-1977 and in 1980-1990 he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, since 1987 he has been a professor.
From 1977-1980 he was a professor at Stanford.
Since 1990, Sharpless has been a professor at the Scripps Research Institution, combining this work since 1996 with a professorship at the Institute of Chemical Biology.
Sharpless developed chiral metal complex catalysts for the stereoselective oxidation of organic compounds. He discovered the reactions (bearing the name of Sharpless): cis -addition of nitrogen and oxygen to olefins catalyzed by osmium tetroxide (1978), enantioselective epoxidation of allyl alcohols by the action of tert -butyl peroxide and tetraisopropoxytitanium in the presence of optically pure diethyl tartrate (1980), enantioselective cis-hydroxylation of olefins using osmium catalyst (1988).
Sharpless’ discoveries led to the search for new schemes for catalytic asymmetric synthesis, implemented by many research groups around the world. These discoveries make a significant contribution not only to chemistry, but also to materials science, biology and medicine, open the way to new molecules – carriers of as yet unexplained and unpredictable properties of the molecular world.
Barry Sharpless is an honorary doctor of many universities around the world.
The scientist has received many awards . In 2001, Barry Sharpless was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (the other half was shared by William Knowles and Ryoji Noyori) “for his work in the field of chiral catalyzed oxidation reactions”.
In 2022, Barry Sharpless was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the second time (together with the American Caroline Bertozzi and the Dane Morten Meldal) for the method of rapid synthesis of chemical compounds.
MELDAL Morten
Danish chemist Morten Peter Meldal was born on January 16, 1954 in Copenhagen (Denmark).
He received his MA in 1980 and his PhD in carbohydrate synthesis and immunology in 1986 from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). Conducted research as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge (Great Britain), the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).
Since 1998, he has worked at the Carlsberg laboratory, where he was in charge of synthesis research.
From 1997 to 2008, he headed the Center for Solid-Phase Organic Chemistry and Enzymatic Reactions (SPOCC) for combinatorial chemistry.
In 2011, he became a professor at the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, where he still works, and director of the Nanoscience Center.
In 2013, Morten Meldal headed one of the multidisciplinary research centers at the University of Copenhagen.
Co-author of over 330 publications and 30 patents.
Meldal’s area of research is the chemistry of sugar and oligosaccharides, combinatorial chemistry, polymer chemistry, organic synthesis, synthesis automation, artificial receptors and enzymes, nanoanalysis, biomolecular recognition, enzyme activity, molecular immunology, catalysis and materials science, etc.
Meldal is a pioneer in many technological developments and tools for peptide synthesis.
Investigated the reaction of azide-alkyne cycloaddition.
Recipient of the Ralf Franz Hirschmann Prize (2009).
On October 5, 2022, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with the Americans Caroline Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless for the method of rapid synthesis of chemical compounds.
The laureates created a new branch of chemical science, the so-called click chemistry (from the English click – “click”). It studies chemical reactions for the rapid and reliable production of various substances, including biologically active ones, by combining a relatively small number of small elements.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from Novosti and open sources