LAUREATE IN THE “DISCOVERY” CATEGORY

The laureate’s work stands at the crossroads of biology, chemistry, and medicine. Valery Fokin invented a reaction that made it possible to redefine the concept of click chemistry and to explore the living world from a fundamentally new perspective, enabling the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic agents

In chemistry, reactions between substances usually do not go all the way to completion: they might proceed too slowly, or undesirable side reactions can occur. For a long time, therefore, chemists have aspired to create universal reactions capable of occurring between a wide range of compounds with high efficiency and a minimal number of by-products. Click chemistry made this possible (from click — the sound of something snapping into place)

In 2022, Barry Sharpless, Morten Meldal, and Carolyn Bertozzi received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their pioneering work on click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry. However, the key reaction of click chemistry—the one that ultimately redefined the term itself—was independently discovered in 2002 by Valery Fokin, a former collaborator of Barry Sharpless. Fokin developed the copper-catalyzed azide–alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) reaction, which is performed in the presence of ascorbic acid. Barry Sharpless, the author of the original concept of click chemistry, has repeatedly emphasized Fokin’s priority in the development of the CuAAC method.

Currently, there is still no universal collection of reactions that can be used to assemble all complex organic compounds. Nevertheless, CuAAC-based click chemistry acts as a universal molecular “snap,” locking together even the most complex fragments quickly and precisely.

Drawing on Valery Fokin’s research, scientists have created DNA imaging technologies, diagnostic methods for metastatic cancer, and a clinically approved drug for treating metastatic breast cancer. Worldwide, many thousands of CuAAC reactions are performed daily for a wide range of clinical and scientific purposes, most notably for gene sequencing. This allows Valery Fokin to be regarded as the author of one of the most important technologies of the future—one that is already beginning to benefit humanity today.

Bio: Valery Fokin was born in 1971. In 1993, he graduated from the Faculty of Chemistry of Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod and also earned a Bachelor’s degree from Calvin College (now Calvin University, Michigan, USA), where he studied during his fifth year as part of an exchange program. In 1998, he received his PhD from the University of Southern California, after which he remained in the United States. He is currently a Professor at the University of Southern California (USA).