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Carolyn R. Bertozzi is an American chemist and professor at Stanford University with research interests at the interface between biology and chemistry. Carolyn Bertozzi earned her AB in Chemistry from Harvard University and Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley. A Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Bertozzi and two other chemists in 2022. Bertozzi was recognized for developing a way to perform chemical reactions and study chemistry inside living cells without disturbing other cell processes. Bertozzi applies chemistry to solve problems in biology and medicine. The Sarafan ChEM-H (Chemistry, Engineering, and Medicine for Human Health) Institute is led by Bertozzi. She was named the Baker Family Director of Sarafan CheM-H in 2020.
Bertozzi's research is focused on glycans, complex and information-dense sugar-based polymers (polysachharides). These biopolymers are one of the building blocks of life, along with proteins and nucleic acids like DNA. In living cells, glycans have roles in structure, energy storage, and system regulation. Bertozzi developed bioorthogonal chemistry to attach fluorescent tags to glycans to track them in living cells without disturbing other cell processes. Bertozzi’s work allowed researchers to see for the first time how glycans were distributed on the cell surface and provided a way to study chemistry inside the complex chemical environment of a living organism. The first method Bertozzi used to achieve bioorthogonal chemistry was based on the Staudinger reaction. To speed up her bioorthogonal process, Bertozzi adapted click chemistry methods developed by Sharpless and Meldal. Since copper is toxic to cells, Bertozzi developed copper-free click chemistry, which she used to track the activity of glycans.
The Bertozzi research group develops chemical tools to study the glycobiology underlying diseases such as cancer, inflammation, tuberculosis, and COVID-19. Glycosylation is the linking of glycans to lipid or protein molecules. Glycosylation profiles on cell surfaces are used to develop diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Bertozzi’s research group helped develop tests for tuberculosis, HIV, and a new class of medicines that remove disease-causing proteins from the surface of cells.
Carolyn Bertozzi, K. Barry Sharpless, and Morten Meldal were awarded the 2022 Nobel prize in Chemistry for their development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry. Click chemistry, developed by the Sharpless Lab, is a set of reliable, selective reactions for rapid synthesis of new compounds through heteroatom links (C-X-C). Sharpless and Meldal both independently discovered CuAAC, the copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition, which is known as quintessential click chemistry. Click chemistry is a way to link molecules together efficiently to produce reliable products. Bioorthogonal chemistry allows chemical reactions to occur in living cells.
Click chemistry is orthogonal to other chemistries. Orthogonal, which means perpendicular in geometry, refers to chemical reactions that proceed independently in the same medium without affecting other molecules. Bertozzi’s contribution to click chemistry allowed reactions to occur without interfering with the chemistry inside a living cell and she coined the term bioorthogonal. Bertozzi used click chemistry biorthogonal reactions to label and map glycans on the surface of living cells without disturbing cell function.
Dr. Bertozzi cofounded Redwood Bioscience, Enable Biosciences, Palleon Pharmaceuticals, InterVenn Bio, OliLux Bio, Grace Science LLC, and Lycia Therapeutics. Bertozzi is a member of the Board of Directors of Lilly.
Carolyn Bertozzi’s father, William Bertozzi, was a physics professor at MIT.
