Nobel Laureate Lecture
"My Journey of Discovery" Lecture Series
Morten P. Meldal
Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
Prof. Morten P. Meldal
Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
Prof. Morten P. Meldal is a professor at the University of Copenhagen, renowned for his pioneering contributions to organic chemistry, peptide synthesis, and click chemistry. Born on January 16, 1954, he earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and later conducted postdoctoral research at Cambridge University, UK. Meldal is best known for his independent discovery of the copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition (CuAAC) in the late 1990s while working at Carlsberg Laboratory, Denmark. This reaction became a fundamental component of click chemistry, enabling the efficient and selective synthesis of 1,2,3-triazoles, widely used in drug development, materials science, and bioconjugation. For this groundbreaking work, he was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, along with Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless.
Lecture Title
” Chemistry is everything,
as seen through the Nobel molecular adventure of
Click chemistry“
Lecture Poster
Landmark Contributions
of Meldal in areas of Chemistry
Click Chemistry and CuAAC Reaction
Click Chemistry is a concept introduced by K. Barry Sharpless in 2001, referring to highly efficient, selective, and reliable chemical reactions that “click” molecules together like puzzle pieces. These reactions are simple, fast, high-yielding…
Solid-Phase and Combinatorial Chemistry
Solid-Phase Chemistry is a method where molecules are synthesized while attached to a solid support (such as resin beads). This technique allows for easy purification, as excess reagents and byproducts can be washed away without complicated…
Peptide and Carbohydrate Chemistry
Peptide Chemistry focuses on the synthesis, structure, and function of peptides, which are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. Peptides play crucial roles in biological processes, drug development, and biomaterials. Advances in solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS)…
Catalysis and Reaction Development
Catalysis is the process of using a catalyst to speed up a chemical reaction without being consumed in the process. Catalysts are crucial in organic synthesis, drug development, and industrial chemistry, as they improve efficiency, selectivity, and sustainability…
Chemical Biology and Bioconjugation
Chemical Biology is an interdisciplinary field that applies chemical techniques to study and manipulate biological systems. It focuses on designing small molecules, probes, and reactions to understand cellular functions, protein interactions, and disease mechanisms…
Meldal's Key Papers
Published influential Scientific Papers
Peptidotriazoles on Solid Phase: [1,2,3]-Triazoles by Regiospecific Copper(I)-Catalyzed 1,3-Dipolar Cycloadditions of Terminal Alkynes to Azides
The cycloaddition of azides to alkynes is one of the most important synthetic routes to 1H-[1,2,3]- triazoles. Here a novel regiospecific copper(I)-catalyzed 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of …
Cu-Catalyzed Azide-Alkyne Cycloaddition
The Huisgen 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction of organic azides and alkynes1,2 has gained considerable attention in recent years due to the introduction in 2001 of Cu(1) catalysis by Tornøe and Meldal,3 leading to a major improvement in both rate and regioselectivity of the reaction, as realized independently by the Meldal and the Sharpless laboratories…
Polymer “clicking” by CuAAC reactions
The CuAAC “click” reaction has developed as one of the most useful and widely employed reactions in ligation within polymer chemistry. This is due to the unique properties of the Cu(I) catalysis which renders the reaction quantitative even at low concentrations, orthogonal with other chemistries and extremely robust. The formed triazole on the other hand is of intermediate polarity and…
Pega: a flow stable polyethylene glycol dimethyl acrylamide copolymer for solid phase synthesis
A copolymer of bisacrylamido polyethylene glycol, monoacrylamido polyethylene glycol and N,N-dimethyl acrylamide was synthesized by radical polymerization and characterized for peptide synthesis by preparation of the difficult test sequence 65–74 from the acyl carrier protein. Reaction times…
Internally quenched fluorescent peptide substrates disclose the subsite preferences of human caspases 1, 3, 6, 7 and 8
Subsite interactions are considered to define the stringent specificity of proteases for their natural substrates. To probe this issue in the proteolytic pathways leading to apoptosis we have examined the P4, P1 …
Awards & Honors
Meldal received numerous prestigious awards
2022
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
shared with Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless
2022
The Carlsberg Foundation Research Prize
2011
Vincent du Vigneaud Award
2009
Ralph F. Hirschmann Award
1996
Leonidas Zervas Award
" The reality is much more complex than we as chemists are able to imagine, and new things come up all the time, and will forever. "
Morten P. Meldal
Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
Symposium Poster
MY Journey of discovery
For Queries
Contact
lecture@binstitute.org
+91 93815 64100
+91 75698 65357
+91 93815 64100
+91 75698 65357
