On October 5th 2022, Carolyn Bertozzi was announced as one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. As the founder of an entire sub-branch of chemistry, a significant researcher into infectious diseases, and a one-time member of a heavy rock band, her career so far has been more than fruitful. These immense contributions to science have secured her a place among the most influential scientists in history.
Despite being born into a highly scientific family, Bertozzi’s initial passion was music. Yet, pressured by her parents to give up this pursuit, she instead decided to invest into the field of medicine, and started taking pre-med courses at Harvard University. At first, biology captured her interest far more than chemistry, and she claimed that general chemistry “was just a box I had to check”.
Yet it was all destined to change when Bertozzi took organic chemistry, a notoriously rigorous course that requires immense amounts of memorization. While many of her classmates struggled to understand the concepts, Bertozzi discovered newfound interest in the field – so much so that she changed to a chemistry major the following year. From that moment on, her life took a drastic turn.
After getting her PhD., Bertozzi trained as a postdoc in an immunology lab, where she studied the role of carbohydrates in immune systems. Specifically, they were interested in glycans, a type of complex carbohydrates that are found on the surface of cells. Glycans play a key role in cellular function, as they help cells to communicate with each other, regulate the activities of many proteins, and, most importantly for the study, assist in immune response. But Bertozzi and her colleagues were confronted by a significant issue: scientists at the time did not have the technology to properly image glycans; thus, studying their function was highly difficult. This was all the inspiration Bertozzi needed to begin conducting her own line of research, which would ultimately lead her to the 2022 Nobel Prize.
Essentially, what Bertozzi did was create a tool to mark out glycans without disturbing normal biological processes. While it may not sound difficult, this project took her years to complete. Ultimately, Bertozzi made key modifications to fluorescent labels, a pre-existing technology, and allowed scientists to clearly observe glycans for the first time. In doing this project, she invented a new field of science: bioorthogonal chemistry. This field deals with chemically modifying molecules within cells without disrupting other biological processes. Such technologies are highly important, as they allow scientists to be able to effectively study specific biomolecules.
The applications of these technologies are broad, but Bertozzi mainly directed it into medicine and immunology. Along with her team, she utilized this powerful tool to further advances in our understanding of diseases such as tuberculosis, cancer, and, more recently COVID. Using this enhanced knowledge, Bertozzi and her team developed new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to combat these illnesses. Currently, many of the technologies which Bertozzi created, both in the field of bioorthogonal chemistry and immunology, have been put into commercial use, and she herself has co-founded and contributed to multiple biotechnology start-ups.
The improvements in science which Bertozzi have spurred are immense; her pioneering work in bioorthogonal chemistry has allowed scientists to study a highly essential biomolecule for the first time, and her later advances in immunology have also been significant. But nonetheless, the full potential of Bertozzi’s achievements has hardly yet been exploited, and there remain many real-life problems that these technologies can be applied to.
"When the world is in crisis,” Bertozzi said in a Nobel Prize interview, “let chemistry save everything.”
Works cited:
Jansen, K. (2020). Carolyn Bertozzi. C&EN Global Enterprise, 98(9), 37–37. https://doi.org/10.1021/cen-09809-feature7
Rogers, K., & Gregersen, E. (2022). Carolyn R. Bertozzi. In Encyclopedia Britannica.