The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for developing a method of “adsorbing molecules together” to design new drugs.
“Click chemistry” or bioorthogonal reactions can be used to produce new cancer drugs and map DNA.
This is the work of American scientists Carolyn R Bertozzi and K Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal from Denmark.
Mr. Sharpless of Scripps Research in California received the same award in 2001 and is the fifth person to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice.
Ms. Bertozzi is with Stanford University in California and Mr. Meldal is with the University of Copenhagen.
Last year, the Chemistry Prize was awarded to Benjamin Lister and David Macmillan for inventing a greener way to build molecules.
It “has greatly benefited humanity,” the team said.
French scientists Alain Aspect, Austria’s Anton Zeilinger and American John F Clauser were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday.
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They found that tiny particles can still be connected even after separation — called quantum entanglement, which can be used in computing and encryption.
The chemistry prize was announced at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on Wednesday, the literature prize on Thursday and the peace prize on Monday.