Carolyn Bertozzi

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Lore & Background

Bertozzi received her B.A., summa cum laude, in chemistry from Harvard University, where she worked with Professor Joe Grabowski on the design and construction of a photoacoustic calorimeter. Grabowski was impressed with her work and required Bertozzi to write a thesis on this project, which was submitted and Bertozzi 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 from Harvard in 1988, she worked at Bell Labs with Chris Chidsey. Bertozzi completed her Ph.D. in chemistry at University of California, Berkeley in 1993 with Mark Bednarski, working on the chemical synthesis of oligosaccharide analogs. While at Berkeley, she discovered that viruses can bind to sugars in the body. The discovery led to her field of research, glycobiology. During Bertozzi's third year of graduate school, Bednarski was diagnosed with colon cancer, which resulted in him taking a leave of absence and changing his career path by enrolling in medical school. This left Bertozzi and the rest of the lab to complete their Ph.D. work with no direct supervision. After graduating from Berkeley with a Ph.D., Bertozzi was a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with Steven Rosen, where she studied the activity of endothelial oligosaccharides in promoting cell adhesion at inflammation sites. While working with Rosen at UCSF, Bertozzi was able to modify the protein and sugar molecules in the walls of living cells so that the cells accept foreign materials such as implants. In 1996, Bertozzi became a faculty member in the UC Berkeley College of Chemistry and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she served as the director of the Molecular Foundry. She has been an investigator with HHMI since 2000. In 1999, while working with HHMI and at Berkeley, she founded the field of bioorthogonal chemistry and coined the term in 2003. In 2015, Bertozzi moved to Stanford University to join the ChEM-H Institute. She has co-founded multiple biotechnology startups: Thios Pharmaceuticals in 2001, Redwood Bioscience in 2008, Enable Biosciences in 2014, Palleon Pharma in 2015, InterVenn Biosciences in 2017, the Grace Science Foundation in 2018, and OliLux Biosciences and Lycia Therapeutics in 2019.

Reader's Guide

Carolyn Bertozzi's significance lies in her creation of bioorthogonal chemistry, a set of chemical reactions that can occur inside living systems without interfering with natural biological processes. This innovation, for which she shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Morten P. Meldal and Karl Barry Sharpless, has enabled researchers to chemically modify molecules in living organisms and not interrupt the processes of the cell. Her work on cell surface sugars (glycans) has deepened understanding of how these molecules influence cancer, inflammatory disorders such as arthritis, and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. Bertozzi has applied the techniques of bioorthogonal chemistry to study glycocalyx, the sugars that surround the cell membrane. Her lab has also developed tools for research, such as creating chemical tools for studying glycans in living systems. In 2018, her lab reported a solvatochromic trehalose probe for the rapid detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum. In 2017, due to her lab's discovery of linking the sugars on the surface of cancer cells and their ability to avoid the immune system defenses, she was invited to speak at Stanford's TED talk, giving a talk entitled "What the sugar coating on your cells is trying to tell you". Bertozzi's legacy also includes her role as a mentor and entrepreneur, founding multiple biotechnology companies that translate basic research into clinical applications. Her election to the National Academy of Sciences (2005), the Institute of Medicine (2011), and the National Academy of Inventors (2013), along with her receipt of the MacArthur Fellowship at age 33 and the Lemelson–MIT Prize faculty award in 2010 as the first woman to receive it, underscore her broad impact on both chemistry and medicine.

Did You Know?

• Bertozzi won the Thomas T. Hoopes Undergraduate Thesis Prize at Harvard for her work on a photoacoustic calorimeter.
• While an undergraduate, she played in the band Bored of Education with future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.
• During her third year of graduate school, her advisor Mark Bednarski was diagnosed with colon cancer and left the lab, leaving Bertozzi to complete her Ph.D. with no direct supervision.
• She coined the term 'bioorthogonal chemistry' in 2003, four years after founding the field in 1999.
• In 2010, she was the first woman to receive the Lemelson–MIT Prize faculty award.

Academic Journey and Major Honors

Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi, born on October 10, 1966, built a career that bridges chemistry and biology in ways few scientists have managed. She earned her undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Harvard in 1988, then completed her doctorate at UC Berkeley in 1993 under Mark Bednarski. A postdoctoral stint at UCSF with Steven Rosen preceded her 1996 appointment as a faculty member in Berkeley's College of Chemistry and a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she later directed the Molecular Foundry. In 2015 she relocated to Stanford, where she now holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Her honors are extensive: a MacArthur genius fellowship at just thirty-three, the 2010 Lemelson-MIT Prize faculty award (the first woman to receive it), election to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Inventors, membership in Italy's Accademia dei Lincei since 2021, and a seat on the Arc Institute's scientific advisory board beginning in 2024. The crowning recognition came in 2022 when she shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Morten P. Meldal and Karl Barry Sharpless for their work on click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.

The Science That Changed a Field

The intellectual core of Bertozzi's work lies in a question she pursued during her Berkeley doctoral years: how do sugars on cell surfaces interact with pathogens? That discovery—that viruses can latch onto the body's own sugar molecules—planted the seed for what would become glycobiology. Building on that foundation, she founded the field of bioorthogonal chemistry around 1999 and gave it its name in 2003. The concept is elegant: design chemical reactions that proceed inside a living organism without disturbing the cell's own biochemistry. This opens a window for tagging, tracking, and modifying molecules in real time within living tissue. Her laboratory has applied these tools to the glycocalyx, the sugary shell surrounding every cell, probing how it influences cancer progression, inflammatory conditions like arthritis, and infectious diseases including tuberculosis and viral infections such as COVID-19. In 2017, her team's finding that cancer cells use surface sugars to dodge immune detection earned her a TED talk at Stanford. In 2018, her group reported a trehalose-based probe capable of rapidly detecting Mycobacterium tuberculosis in patient sputum samples.

From Lab Bench to Biotech

Bertozzi has a remarkable track record of translating academic research into real-world companies and therapeutic pipelines. In 2001 she and Steven Rosen launched Thios Pharmaceuticals in Emeryville, California, the first firm to target sulfation pathways, though it dissolved by 2005. Her 2008 venture, Redwood Bioscience, co-founded with former student David Rabuka, developed SMARTag technology for site-specific protein modification to deliver small-molecule drugs against cancer; Catalent Pharma Solutions acquired the company in 2014, and Bertozzi continued advising its biologics division. She went on to co-found Enable Biosciences (2014) for at-home diagnostics of type 1 diabetes and HIV, Palleon Pharma (2015) exploring glycoimmune checkpoint inhibitors for cancer, and InterVenn Biosciences (2017), which pairs mass spectrometry with artificial intelligence for glycoproteomics and ovarian cancer diagnostics. In 2018 she helped establish the Grace Science Foundation to develop affordable therapeutics for NGLY1 deficiency, and in 2019 she co-founded both OliLux Biosciences and Lycia Thera. Beyond companies, she led ACS Central Science, the American Chemical Society's first fully open-access peer-reviewed journal, making all content freely available to the public.

The Human Behind the Chemistry

Before she was a Nobel laureate, Carolyn Bertozzi was a Harvard undergraduate who played in several bands, most notably Bored of Education, whose lineup included a young Tom Morello, later famous as Rage Against the Machine's guitarist. In the lab, she worked with Professor Joe Grabowski designing a photoacoustic calorimeter; he was so impressed that he required her to write a formal thesis on the project, which went on to win the Thomas T. Hoopes Undergraduate Thesis Prize. After graduating, she spent a brief period at Bell Labs with Chris Chidsey before moving to Berkeley for her doctorate. Her graduate experience carried a personal difficulty: in her third year, her advisor Mark Bednarski was diagnosed with colon cancer. He took a leave of absence and ultimately enrolled in medical school, leaving Bertozzi and the rest of the lab to finish their doctoral work without direct supervision. She also served as an HHMI investigator beginning in 2000, a role that sustained her research independence throughout her career. These early chapters—music, a demanding undergraduate project, an advisor's illness, and the independence of a postdoc—shaped a scientist who would go on to redefine how chemistry meets biology.