Carolyn Bertozzi and Barry Sharpless from the United States and Morten Meldol from Denmark won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on the Nobelprize.org website, BTA reported.

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is for making a difficult process easier.

Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldol laid the foundations of functional chemistry - click chemistry, in which the building blocks of molecules are connected quickly and efficiently.

Carolyn Bertozzi took click chemistry to a new dimension and began using it on living organisms.

Chemists have long sought a way to create increasingly complex molecules.

In pharmaceutical research, this often involves artificially recreating natural molecules with medicinal properties.

This has led to many "delightful" molecular structures, but their production is usually time-consuming and very expensive.

"This year's chemistry prize is about not overcomplicating things, but about working with what is easy and simple. Functional molecules can be created even in a simple way," said Prof. Johan Aquist, Nobel Chairman chemistry committee.

Barry Sharpless, for whom this is the second Nobel Prize in Chemistry, gives the start.

Around 2000, he coined the term "click chemistry", which is a form of simple and reliable chemistry.

With it, the reactions take place quickly and unwanted by-products are avoided.

Shortly thereafter, Morten Meldol and Barry Sharpless independently introduced what is now the crown jewel of click chemistry, a copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction.

This is an elegant and efficient chemical reaction that is now widely used.

Among many other applications, it serves to develop pharmaceuticals, to map DNA, and to create materials that are more fit for purpose.

Carolyn Bertozzi takes click chemistry to a new level.

In order to map important but elusive biomolecules on the surface of cells - glycans (compounds consisting of a large number of glycosidically linked monosaccharides), she develops click-reactions that work in living organisms.

Its bioorthogonal reactions occur without disturbing the normal chemistry of the cell.

These reactions are now used worldwide to study cells and track biological processes.

Using bioorthogonal reactions, researchers have improved pharmaceuticals for targeted cancer treatments that are now being tested in clinical trials.

Click chemistry and bioorthogonal reactions ushered chemistry into the era of functionalism.

This brings the greatest benefit to humanity.

Carl Barry Sharpless won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with Ryoji Noyori and William Knowles for discoveries related to the method of asymmetric catalysis.

Nobel week begins