Who is Karl Barry Sharpless?


American scientist Karl Barry Sharpless has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on bio-orthogonal research findings that are used in cancer drugs and clinical trials.

This personality has already won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and thus has now joined the 5 lucky scientists who have won more than one Nobel Prize in their lifetime.

Around the year 2000, he came up with the concept of Click Chemistry. Click chemistry is a form of simple and reliable chemistry, where reactions occur rapidly and unwanted complexities are avoided.

Morton, Chlorine Bertozzi and the chemistry they discovered created a glucose sensor for diabetes patients with the help of "click chemistry". When light of one color falls on the chemical in this sensor, it returns another color. This sensor measures the increase or decrease in the amount of light (fluorescence) when glucose enters the chemical. 

In this type of chemistry, you connect different molecules together through a single molecule in the middle.

Suppose two different types of molecules do not have any chemical bonding. Now, if another molecule comes between them which is in harmony with both of them at the same time, then you can connect these two different molecules together to make new kind of molecules.

This research led to many important developments in medical sciences, biology and other fields.


For example:

  • ▪️Now we can analyze and control the many complex chemical reactions in the human body.
  • Cells can be illuminated and analyzed, and cancer can be treated. 
  • Click chemistry is also involved in the research of corona virus, its tests and the search for its vaccine.
  • ▪️It is as if we have such a powerful way that we can somehow connect a molecule to any unpaired molecule and see the wonders of nature.