Morten Meldal

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Morten Meldal (received his PhD degree in chemical engineering from Technical University of Denmark (DTU) under the supervision of Klaus Bock and focused on the synthetic chemistry of carbohydrates. From 1983 to 1988 he was a postdoctoral fellow in organic chemistry, first at the DTU, next in the laboratory of Dr RC Sheppard at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge University, and then at the University of Copenhagen. In 1998, he was appointed to lead the synthesis group in the Department of Chemistry of the Carlsberg Laboratory. In 2011, he was appointed professor at the University of Copenhagen where he is head of the Center of Evolutionary Chemical Biology.

Morten has long developed several technological techniques and instruments for chemical peptide and organic synthesis including for assembling large split-mix libraries. His work spans combinatorial chemistry, polymer chemistry, organic synthesis, automation in synthesis, artificial receptors and enzymes, nano assays, biomolecular recognition, enzyme activity, cellular assays, molecular immunology, nano scale MS and NMR, and optical encoding. He has published more than 300 papers and holds more than 20 patents. He was also the first to examine cycloaddition of acetylenes and azides for use in peptide and protein conjugations. Morten's group then showed this reaction (‘click chemistry’) to be orthogonal to many functional group chemistries. These pioneering studies led to Morten being awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, jointly with Carolyn R. Bertozzi and Karl Barry Sharpless, "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry". Click chemistry continues to make profound contributions to many fields of science and medicine ranging from peptide, protein and carbohydrate modifications, labelling, biomaterials and new drug discoveries.