“All sorts of crazy things,” is how Carolyn Bertozzi, the 2022 Nobel Prize winner, describes her life’s work. Actually doing “Chemistry in Cells and Humans”.

When she began her research in 1997, the Stanford professor just wanted to observe the evolution of certain molecules on the surface of cancer cells.

Thanks to her discoveries, at least two companies — including one she co-founded — are now developing innovative cancer treatments.

The variety of applications that their findings enable is impressive: performing treatments with extreme precision, understanding better how drugs work in the body, making certain bacteria visible, to name just a few.

“I can’t really name them all. I would never have foreseen the vast majority of these applications,” she told the AFP news agency in an interview.

The Nobel Prize committee recognized Bertozzi’s groundbreaking advances on Wednesday, making her, at just 55, the eighth woman to receive the chemistry prize.

Her journey began when she realized she had a passion for organic chemistry while taking undergraduate medical courses at Harvard.

The subject is notoriously — many say fiendishly — difficult, but she credits an “amazing professor,” the late David Evans, with bringing it to life — and changing the course of her life.

“I said forget medical school. I’m going to be a chemist,” said Bertozzi, whose sister is a professor of applied mathematics and his father is a physics professor emeritus.

After her postdoctoral work and joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she wanted to take a closer look at glycans: complex carbohydrates, or sugars, found on the surface of cells that “undergo structural changes” when they become cancerous.

Back then, “there was no tool to image sugar, like in a microscope,” she said.

She had an idea that required two chemical substances that fit together perfectly, like pieces of Lego.

The first Lego is supplied to the cells via a sugar. The cell metabolizes it and places it at the top of the glycan. The second piece of Lego, a fluorescent molecule, is injected into the body.

The two Lego pieces click together and voila: Hidden glycans are revealed under a microscope.

This technique is inspired by the “click chemistry” developed independently by Dane Morten Meldal and American Barry Sharpless – Bertozzi’s co-winners. However, their discoveries were based on the use of copper as a catalyst, which is toxic to the body.

One of Bertozzi’s great leaps was achieving the same type of ultra-efficient reaction without copper.

The other tour de force: letting everything happen without wreaking havoc on other processes in the body.

“The beauty of it is that you can take the two Legos and click them together even if they’re surrounded by millions of other very similar plastic toys,” she explained.

She coined the term “bioorthogonal chemistry,” meaning a reaction that does not interfere with other biochemical processes. It took 10 years to perfect the technique.

Researchers are now using these breakthroughs to develop cancer treatments.

Glycans on cancer cells “are able to hide the cancer cell from the immune system – and that’s why your body can’t fight them, it can’t see them,” she explains.

Using bioorthogonal chemistry, “we made a new kind of medicine that basically works like a lawnmower,” says Bertozzi.

The first Lego attaches to the surface of the cancer cell, and the second, which clips onto it, is equipped with an enzyme that “mows down the sugar like it’s just grass, it cuts off the grass and the sugar falls off,” she said says with a smile.

The drug is currently being tested in the early stages of a clinical trial.

Another company is trying to use bioorthogonal chemistry for more targeted cancer treatments. The first lego piece is injected into a tumor, then a second, which carries the drug, attaches itself and acts only on its target.

“This allows the oncologist to treat and kill the tumor without exposing the person’s entire body to a toxic chemical,” she says.

“Hopefully what the future brings will have an impact on human health,” says Bertozzi. “But the people who decide that more than I do are the students and postdocs who come to my lab.”

Hundreds of them, current and former, filled their email inboxes with messages of congratulations this morning.

“That’s really the cycle of science — it’s mentoring and then mentoring,” she adds. And “Mentoring students gives you the opportunity to increase the impact of your science.”