Carolyn Bertozzi

Lore & Background

Bertozzi received her B.A., summa cum laude, in chemistry from Harvard University, where she worked with Professor Joe Grabowski on a photoacoustic calorimeter. She won the Thomas T. Hoopes Undergraduate Thesis Prize. While an undergraduate, she played in several bands, notably Bored of Education with future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. After graduating in 1988, she worked at Bell Labs with Chris Chidsey. She completed her Ph.D. in chemistry at University of California, Berkeley in 1993 with Mark Bednarski, working on the chemical synthesis of oligosaccharide analogs. During her third year of graduate school, Bednarski was diagnosed with colon cancer, leaving Bertozzi and the rest of the lab to complete their Ph.D. work with no direct supervision.

Reader's Guide

Carolyn Bertozzi's significance lies in her creation of bioorthogonal chemistry, a field that allows chemical reactions to occur within living systems without disrupting cellular processes. This innovation has enabled researchers to study biomolecules in their native environments, advancing understanding of diseases such as cancer, inflammation, and tuberculosis. Her work on glycans—sugars on cell surfaces—has opened new avenues for biotherapeutics and diagnostics. Bertozzi's leadership at Stanford University, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Molecular Foundry, along with her co-founding of multiple biotechnology startups, underscores her impact on both fundamental science and translational medicine. Her Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2022, shared with Morten P. Meldal and Karl Barry Sharpless, recognized the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry, cementing her legacy as a transformative figure in modern chemistry.

Did You Know?

• Bertozzi coined the term 'bioorthogonal chemistry' in 2003.
• She received the MacArthur 'genius' award at age 33.
• She was the first woman to receive the Lemelson–MIT Prize faculty award in 2010.
• While an undergraduate at Harvard, she played in a band with future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

Academic Standing and Major Honors

Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi, born in October 1966, has built a career that bridges chemistry and biology in ways few scientists have managed. Her crowning achievement arrived in 2022 when she shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Morten P. Meldal and Karl Barry Sharpless, recognized for developing click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry. Long before that, she earned the MacArthur "genius" fellowship at just thirty-three and, in 2010, became the first woman to claim the Lemelson-MIT Prize faculty award. Her institutional memberships reflect sustained peer respect: she joined the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, the Institute of Medicine in 2011, and the National Academy of Inventors in 2013, and has belonged to Italy's Accademia dei Lincei since 2021. At Stanford she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences and serves as an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She previously directed the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and since 2024 has advised the scientific board of the Arc Institute. In 2014 she was tapped to lead ACS Central Science, the American Chemical Society's first open-access journal, making its content freely available to the public.

Bioorthogonal Chemistry and the Glycan Frontier

In 1999, while working at UC Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Bertozzi laid the groundwork for a field she would formally name "bioorthogonal chemistry" in 2003. The core idea is deceptively simple yet revolutionary: design chemical reactions that can modify molecules inside a living organism without disrupting the cell's own processes. This capability has become a cornerstone tool across modern biology. Her research focus centers on glycobiology—the study of sugars on cell surfaces and their roles in disease. She has advanced understanding of how cell-surface oligosaccharides govern cell recognition and inter-cellular communication, and how the glycocalyx, the sugar coat surrounding the cell membrane, influences cancer, inflammatory disorders like arthritis, and infectious diseases including tuberculosis. In 2018 her lab reported a solvatochromic trehalose probe enabling rapid detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum samples. More recently, her group has developed chemical tools to study glycans in living systems, with applications reaching into viral infections such as COVID-19. In 2017, her discovery linking cancer-cell surface sugars to immune evasion earned her a TED talk invitation at Stanford.

From Lab Bench to Biotech Foundry

Bertozzi has a remarkable track record of translating bench science into real-world biotechnology ventures. In 2001 she and Steven Rosen co-founded Thios Pharmaceuticals in Emeryville, California, the first company to target sulfation pathways, though it dissolved in 2005. In 2008 she co-founded Redwood Bioscience with former graduate student David Rabuka, developing SMARTag technology that allows small drugs to attach site-specifically to proteins for cancer treatment; Catalent Pharma Solutions acquired the company in 2014, and Bertozzi remains on its biologics advisory board. In 2014 she co-founded Enable Biosciences in South San Francisco, pursuing at-home diagnostic tools for type 1 diabetes, HIV, and other conditions. Palleon Pharma followed in 2015, investigating glycoimmune checkpoint inhibitors as cancer therapies. In 2017 she helped establish InterVenn Biosciences, which pairs mass spectrometry with artificial intelligence to enhance glycoproteomics for target discovery and ovarian cancer diagnostics. The Grace Science Foundation, co-founded in 2018, targets NGLY1 deficiency with efficient, low-cost therapeutics. In 2019 she co-founded both OliLux Biosciences and Lycia Thera.

Formative Years and the Birth of a Researcher

Bertozzi's path to scientific prominence was shaped by both intellectual curiosity and personal adversity. At Harvard she earned a B.A. summa cum laude in chemistry, working with Professor Joe Grabowski on designing a photoacoustic calorimeter—a project so impressive that he required her to write a full thesis, which won the Thomas T. Hoopes Undergraduate Thesis Prize. Outside the lab, she played in several bands, most notably Bored of Education alongside future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. After graduating in 1988 she spent time at Bell Labs with Chris Chidsey before moving to UC Berkeley for her Ph.D. under Mark Bednarski, where she worked on chemical synthesis of oligosaccharide analogs. It was during this period that she discovered viruses can bind to sugars in the body, a finding that launched her lifelong interest in glycobiology. Her third year brought a painful disruption: Bednarski was diagnosed with colon cancer, took a leave, and ultimately enrolled in medical school, leaving his graduate students to finish their doctoral work without direct supervision. She then joined UCSF as a postdoctoral fellow with Steven Rosen, studying how endothelial oligosaccharides promote cell adhesion at inflammation sites and learning to modify cell-wall proteins and sugars so cells accept foreign materials such as implants.