SAN DIEGO — K. Barry Sharpless of La Jolla, California's Scripps Research on Wednesday won a second Nobel Prize in chemistry, this time for helping create a swift, efficient method for building molecules that has revolutionized drug development and aided in the mapping of DNA.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Sharpless, 81, will share this year's Nobel with Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford and Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Sharpless becomes only the fifth person in history to win a Nobel twice. He was awarded the prize in 2001 for related research that has helped scientists produce chemical reactions that have improved everything from heart medications to agriculture.
This is also the second time in as many years that a Scripps Research scientist has been awarded the Nobel. Last year, Ardem Patapoutian won the Nobel in physiology or medicine for helping to discover cell receptors that enable people to sense heat, cold, pain, touch and sound.
The Nobel Committee said that Sharpless, Bertozzi and Meldal "laid the foundation for a functional form of chemistry – click chemistry – in which molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently.
"Bertozzi has taken click chemistry to a new dimension and started utilising it in living organisms."
Sharpless' latest Nobel arose from his efforts to simplify the process of creating molecules. He wanted to move away from the traditional method of imitating natural molecules. The older method did lead to the creation of pharmaceutical drugs. But it can be a very expensive, difficult, time-consuming process that often produces unwanted products.
In 2001, Sharpless published a landmark journal article that pointed to a possible way forward. It involved a comparatively inexpensive, streamlined process for linking simple molecules together to create molecules, particularly those meant to prevent and treat disease. And there are fewer by-products.
"Combining simple chemical building blocks makes it possible to create an almost endless variety of molecules," the Nobel Committee said in explaining the Lego-like process.
Sharpless dubbed the method "click chemistry" and joined Bertozzi, Meldal and other scientists around the world in turning the idea into reality.
The breakthrough built on Sharpless' earlier work on chemical synthesis. He shared the 2001 Nobel in chemistry with William S. Knowles, who had worked Monsanto, and Ryoji Noyori of Nagoya University in Japan.
"(Sharpless) has had a tremendous impact on chemistry, first with his development of asymmetric synthesis and now with his elegant click chemistry," Scripps Research President Peter Schultz told the Union-Tribune early Wednesday.
"His work opened whole new scientific frontiers that have had a major impact on the fields of chemistry, biology, and medicine. Barry has a remarkable combination of chemical insight, uncanny intuition, and real-world practicality — he is a chemist's chemist and a wonderful colleague."
Scripps Research specializes in such basic research and has helped develop such drugs as Surfaxin, which is used to prevent respiratory problems in premature infants, and Zeposia, which is used to treat relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis
Sharpless — a reclusive figure who wasn't available for comment early Wednesday — was born on April 28, 1941 in Philadelphia, where his early years were devoted to his two great loves, fishing and boating.
"While I had an overwhelming passion for fishing, school I merely enjoyed and I never planned to be a scientist," he told the Nobel Committee for an official biography. "In fact, passion, not planning, is the engine driving all my thought and action. The almost unimaginably good fortune of my youth was that other people made such very, very good plans and choices for me ...
"I was a pre-medical student solely because my parents always hoped that I'd become an MD like my father. Pre-meds majored in chemistry or biology, and between the two I leaned toward chemistry. I didn't get really interested, however, until I had two semesters of organic my sophomore year from a young chemistry professor who chose me to do research in his lab."
He went on to earn a bachelor's degree at Dartmouth College, then a doctorate in organic chemistry from Stanford. Sharpless later spent many years on the faculty at MIT and, for a shorter period, at Stanford.
In 1990, he moved to the Scripps Research Institute, which today is simply known as Scripps Research. The private biomedical research center has long been a bastion for talent. Over the years it has been home to such figures as Kurt Wuthrich, Bruce Beutler and Gerald Edelman, all of whom won a Nobel Prize.
Sharpless could not be reached for comment on Wednesday. But he put his life into perspective in the Nobel Committee biography, saying, in part:
"My most important award, the greatest honor I've ever received, and the grandest and most memorable occasions I've ever witnessed, are, of course, benefits of sharing the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. But other honors have peerless characteristics as well, notably:
The heaviest object in our bank deposit box is the 1995 King Faisal Prize for Science medal; the most beautiful one is the 1988 Prelog Medal from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). Its exquisite relief rendering of Old Vlado's profile rivals the most beautiful portraits found on coins from antiquity, and the gold has a gorgeous, pliant, velvety warmth that has to be seen to be believed (by appointment only). A friend once asked, quite appropriately, if the portrait was of Alexander the Great.
"Three unique objects, and I treasure each one, celebrate the day in 1995 when I received an honorary doctorate from Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology. My only top hat, frequently brought out for guests to admire, bears the Institute's seal; my only ring, always admired when I wear it, is a heavy gold band surrounded by a garland of leaves and acorns in deep relief. These two I share with all the Institute's doctoral recipients, but I also have a large brass cannon shell casing, fired during the cannon salute that accompanied the conferring of the degree and the ceremonial placing of the hat on my head. The shell sits on my desk at home."
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