Trio shares Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Scientists Imitate Life, Melding Carbon Atoms for Uses From Cutting-Edge Drugs to Electronics

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By GAUTAM NAIK

United Press International

Nobel winner Ei-ichi Negishi.

The Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to a trio of scientists who came up with an elegant way to mesh together stubborn carbon atoms, an approach vital for the development of novel medicines, materials and electronics.

An American and two Japanese scientists were awarded the Nobel Prize for revolutionary chemical research. Video courtesy of Reuters.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored Richard Heck of the U.S. and Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki of Japan for developing a sophisticated chemical tool known as palladium-catalyzed cross couplings.
The approach, which the Swedish committee described as "great art in a test tube," lets chemists fashion carbon-based molecules as complex as those found in nature. The three laureates did their fundamental research independently of each other, four decades ago.
"One of our dreams was to synthesize any organic compound of importance," said Dr. Negishi, 75 years old, in a video interview with reporters in Stockholm. "We believe our chemistry will be applicable to a wide range of compounds."
At the heart of the trio's achievement are carbon-carbon bonds, the basis of life. This aspect of chemistry is important enough that it accounts for a total of five Nobel prizes so far.
When making an organic compound, chemists have to join carbon atoms together. Carbon is boringly stable, so scientists deploy chemical tricks to make the atoms more reactive, allowing them to bind.

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From left: Akira Suzuki, Ei-ichi Negishi and American Richard Heck won the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a chemical method that has allowed scientists to make medicines and better electronics.

The approach works fine when concocting simple molecules, but for complex molecules, it generates too many unwanted byproducts. That's where palladium comes in.
The lustrous, silvery-white metal plays the vital role of catalyst. The three Nobel laureates showed that when the carbon atoms meet on a palladium atom, it can spark the chemical reaction.
"Palladium is a sort of matchmaker. It helps the atoms join hands and form a carbon bond," said Jeremy Berg, an inorganic chemist by training and director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
The NIGMS has funded Dr. Negishi's research with $6.5 million since the 1970s. It also supports other scientists involved in similar experiments.

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Today, Dr. Negishi is a chemistry professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Dr. Suzuki, 80, is a retired professor from Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. Dr. Heck, 79, is a professor emeritus at the University of Delaware living in the Philippines.
The chemical toolkit devised by the three scientists—known variously as the Heck reaction, the Negishi reaction and the Suzuki reaction—are now routinely used in labs around the world, as well as by industry.

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Associated Press

Nobel winner Richard Heck.

"It's one thing to do chemical reactions in a lab, but when you scale it up, it gets expensive," said Joseph Francisco, president of the American Chemical Society. "The beauty of their work is that it's very clean chemistry, so you get lots of cost savings in terms of the energy used."
The cross-coupling technique has been used to optimize the blue light in organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs, devices that make use of organic molecules that emit light. One of the first OLED-based TV sets, with a monitor just millimeters thick, was recently unveiled in Japan, according to Dr. Francisco.
Some of the most powerful applications of the laureates' work are seen in medicine. The painkiller naproxen, sold in the U.S. under the brand name Aleve, is one of several existing drugs made possible by their work.

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European Pressphoto Agency

Nobel winner Akira Suzuki.

In the late 1980s, scuba divers discovered a Caribbean marine sponge that produces a poison in the form of complex molecules. Scientists found that the poison, discodermolide, could stop cancer cells from proliferating in a test tube, and they wanted to test it as a chemotherapy agent.
But the marine sponge is rare and produces only small quantities of poison. To make sizable amounts for testing, chemists had to synthesize the compound in the lab, a major scientific challenge. They pulled it off by using the palladium-catalyzed technique.
The Nobelists' method has been used to synthesize various other experimental drugs, including one compound aimed at HIV and the herpes virus, and another being tried against colon cancer.
The technique also has a link to this year's Nobel prize for physics. The physics award was given for breakthroughs involving a novel material called graphene. According to the Nobel committee, "in spring 2010, scientists announced that they had attached palladium atoms to graphene, and the resulting solid material was used to carry out the Suzuki reaction in water."
"Their work has had such broad impact, it's nice to see it being recognized," said Dr. Berg of the NIH.

The $1.5 million award will be split equally among the three laureates.

Write to Gautam Naik at gautam.naik@wsj.com