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Exciting New Field of Bioorthogonal Chemistry Owes a Debt to Curiosity-Driven Research from Previous Eras

*Carolyn Bertozzi’s Kavli Lecture Highlights Promise of Biorothogonal Chemistry and Its Links to Basic Research From the Past*

“Bioorthogonal chemistry is literally chemistry for life,” said Carolyn Bertozzi, an internationally acclaimed leader and founder of this emerging and highly promising field of science that could fundamentally change drug development and disease diagnostics. In delivering the Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture at this year’s Spring Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Diego, Bertozzi described how her own ground-breaking research made use of experiments nearly a century ago by two German chemists whose work was driven primarily by scientific curiosity as opposed to the more problem-driven research of today.

Bertozzi is a senior faculty scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California (UC) Berkeley. She is also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The Kavli Foundation is a philanthropic organization that supports basic scientific research. Its ACS lectures are designed to address “the urgent need for vigorous, outside the box thinking by scientists.” (more…)

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