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Through Chemist, Carbohydrate and Analytical chemistry
She received the MacArthur "genius" award at age 33. In 2010, she was the first woman to receive the Lemelson–MIT Prize faculty award. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005), the Institute of Medicine (2011), and the National Academy of Inventors (2013). In 2014, it was announced that Bertozzi would lead ACS Central Science, the American Chemical Society's first peer-reviewed open access journal, which offers all content free to the public. Since 2021 she has been a member of the Accademia dei Lincei.
Bertozzi was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, jointly with Morten P. Meldal and Karl Barry Sharpless, "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry".
Education
Carolyn 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.
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Career and research
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. This new field and technique allows researchers to chemically modify molecules in living organisms and not interrupt the processes of the cell. In 2015, Bertozzi moved to Stanford University to join the ChEM-H Institute.
Bertozzi studies the glycobiology of underlying diseases such as cancer, inflammatory disorders such as arthritis, and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. In particular, Bertozzi has advanced the understanding of cell surface oligosaccharides involved in cell recognition and inter-cellular communication. Bertozzi has applied the techniques of bioorthogonal chemistry to study glycocalyx, the sugars that surround the cell membrane. Her discoveries have advanced the field of biotherapeutics. Her lab has also developed tools for research. One such development is 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".
Biotechnology startups
In 2001, Bertozzi and Steve Rosen co-founded Thios Pharmaceuticals in Emeryville, California, the first company to target sulfation pathways. Thios Pharmaceuticals dissolved in 2005.
In 2008, Bertozzi co-founded Redwood Bioscience, also in Emeryville, California, with her former graduate student David Rabuka. Redwood Bioscience is a biotechnology company that uses SMARTag, a site-specific protein modification technology that allows small drugs to attach to sites on the proteins and can be used to help fight cancers. Redwood Bioscience was acquired by Catalent Pharma Solutions in 2014. Bertozzi remains a part of the advisory board for the biologics sector of the company.
In 2014, she co-founded Enable Biosciences of South San Francisco, California. It focuses on biotechnologies for at-home diagnoses for type 1 diabetes, HIV, and other diseases.
Bertozzi became a co-founder of Palleon Pharma of Waltham, Massachusetts, in 2015. Palleon Pharma focuses on investigating glycoimmune checkpoint inhibitors as a potential treatment for cancer.
In 2017, Bertozzi helped found InterVenn Biosciences, which uses mass spectrometry and artificial intelligence to enhance glycoproteomics for target and biomarker discovery, ovarian cancer diagnostics, and predicting the successes and failures of clinical trials.
She co-founded the Grace Science Foundation in 2018. The foundation focuses on curing NGLY1 deficiency through developing therapeutics that are efficient and inexpensive.
In 2019, she co-founded both OliLux Biosciences and Lycia Therapeutics. OliLux Biosciences develops new methods for tuberculosis detection. The founding of Lycia Therapeutics occurred when Bertozzi's group discovered lysosome-targeting chimeras (LYTACs). The new molecule class may be able to degrade some cardiovascular disease and cancer targets. Lycia Therapeutics focuses on developing technology which utilizes lysosome-targeting chimeras (LYTACs).
Bertozzi served on Eli Lilly's board of directors from 2017 to 2021, including on its Science and Technology Committee, and resigned after Lilly entered a licensing agreement with Lycia Therapeutics, which she co-founded. She has also served on the research advisory boards of pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline, and on the scientific advisory board of Colossal Biosciences since 2021.
Personal life
Bertozzi grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, the daughter of the late Norma Gloria (Berringer) and William Bertozzi. Her father was of Italian descent. Her maternal grandparents were from Nova Scotia, Canada. She has two sisters, one of whom, Andrea Bertozzi, is on the mathematics faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her father was a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She briefly considered a music major after her keyboard skills earned her places in several college rock bands, but felt she was "always centered on the sciences." She continued to make room for music, eventually learning bass guitar.
Bertozzi is a lesbian and has been out since the late 1980s. She and her wife have three sons. As an open lesbian in academia and science, she has served as a role model for students and colleagues.