Carolyn Bertozzi, Nobel Prize in Chemistry: "We have invented a miniature lawn mower for cancer cells"

As a college student, after working as a cashier at a bakery and mowing lawns in private gardens, Carolyn Bertozzi began playing keyboard in a rock band with the guitarist who would go on to found the band Rage Against The Machine, Tom Morello.

They were called Bored of Education, "bored of education", but Bertozzi was not bored at all.

That young rebel who interpreted versions of AC/DC and Def Leppard, born in Boston (United States) 56 years ago, has just won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The researcher has invented a new way of seeing the world and modifying it.

Human cells, including cancer cells, are covered in sugars, "like an M&M peanut," explains Bertozzi of Stanford University.

The scientist invites you to mentally transform yourself into a microscopic plane and fly over the landscape present on the surface of any cell.

“There are giant sequoias, tall and rigid.

Other trees sway in the wind, like weeping willows.

There is also grass and small bushes.

And all that vegetation is made up of sugars: complex carbohydrates with different shapes and sizes.

And they are not there by chance.

There is a specific pattern of vegetation in each cell.

What is seen in a neuron of the brain is different from what is seen in the muscle”, Bertozzi describes passionately, as if he were really navigating a microworld.

Bumping into a cancer cell on her mind journey,

He realizes that he no longer sees a forest.

What she beholds, she warns, is a fearsome jungle.

Humanity did not have the tools to observe these enigmatic sugars, so Bertozzi created a new way of carrying out chemical reactions —called bioorthogonal chemistry— more than two decades ago, with molecules that only interact with each other, without interfering with the endless number of substances present. in a cell.

“It's like two people who are far from each other in a crowded room, but they look into each other's eyes and everything else disappears.

They come closer and connect.

This is how these reactions work, ”he details by videoconference from his home in Stanford.

The researcher devised this method to attach fluorescent molecules to sugars in living animals, so they could be visualized and studied, but her technique has proven revolutionary in a multitude of challenges.

Question.

You affirm that this forest of sugars on the surface of the cells is a language.

Reply.

Yes, sometimes I see them as a QR code to communicate with other cells.

Immune system cells, for example, can come in, scan another cell for sugars, and kill it if they detect the wrong pattern.

But cancer cells, as a survival tactic, generate a pattern of sugars that can confuse the body's defenses.

Tumors have found a way to escape recognition by the immune system and metastasize.

Q.

You also say that sialic acid is "one of the most important sugars of our time."

Why?

A.

Our immune cells can scan the pattern of sialic acids.

It is a language that communicates whether a cell is healthy or damaged.

One of cancer's camouflage mechanisms is the overproduction of sugars with sialic acid, because they basically tell the immune cell that this cancer cell is totally normal, to go away, there's nothing to see here.

That is why it is so important.

Q.

You have founded 11 start-ups.

One of them, Palleon Pharmaceuticals, is testing an experimental drug in cancer patients.

You compare it to a lawn mower: it cuts those sugars with which tumor cells camouflage themselves.

A.

Yes, cut the grass and prune the trees [to allow the immune system to recognize the malignant cells and destroy them].

Q.

In fact, you worked mowing lawns as a teenager.

Maybe it was an inspiration.

A.

I have mowed many lawns in my life.

As a child, my main job in the family was to mow the lawn.

We had a big garden.

A high school friend and I decided to start our own business.

We put up ads in the neighborhood supermarket and people called us to walk dogs, water plants or mow the lawn.

Whatever it took.

P.

It is curious that you ended up inventing a lawn mower against cancer.

A.

Yes, it is a miniature lawn mower for tumor cells.

We are in the first phase of the clinical trial, with two dozen patients with pancreatic, ovarian, colon, skin or lung cancer.

The goal now is to find out what dose is safe.

Q.

Success is not guaranteed.

A.

No, of course.

9 out of 10 experimental drugs fail in human trials, even though they looked fantastic in animal tests.

I am very optimistic, but it would be very naive to say that it will work, until we have data.

Q.

The pharmaceutical industry has ignored these sugars for decades.

A.

Yes, they are still ignored.

In the early 1990s they did pay a lot of attention to this field, but most of the projects didn't work out and they lost interest.

The pharmaceutical industry's turnaround time is short.

If something new doesn't work right away, companies rarely stick around long enough to solve the problems that require a solution.

If we are correct about the role of sialic acid in cancer immunotherapy, there will be a great resurgence of interest.

Q.

You stated a few months ago in your university magazine: "If we are successful, history will look back at this field of research and wonder how people could have been so blind."

R.

Yes, after a while everything is always clear, but I think it will happen.

I think everyone should be working on this strategy for cancer immunotherapy.

I hope we are right.

Right now I could name 20 names of women who undoubtedly deserve the Nobel Prize

Q.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been won by 189 people since 1901. Only eight have been women, 4%.

What do you think?

R.

Five of us are alive and I know most of the rest.

They are incredible women.

Three of us live in California and know each other very well.

Jennifer Doudna invented CRISPR technology [to edit the DNA of living things], Frances Arnold invented the concept of directed evolution.

All of them are epic scientists.

And many more women could have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry decades ago.

Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry Jennifer Doudna, Carolyn Bertozzi and Frances Arnold in Stockholm on December 8. Nanaka Adachi

Q.

Is there machismo in the Nobel jury or what happens?

A.

I don't know, because the process is behind closed doors, but everyone knows that it is a problem.

Every year, when the Nobel laureates are announced and they are all men again, there are many complaints.

It's no secret.

The Nobel committee would like to have a broader pool of nominees to choose from.

And those who nominate are the previous winners, rectors of universities, researchers who have received other awards... If the nominees are not diverse, their nominees will not be either.

The Nobel committee hired a consultant to help them change the process.

Instead of requesting a single nominee from each Nobel winner or from each institution, they are now asking for three.

Q.

Why?

A.

When you apply for a single nominee, people almost always think of an older, white male, out of unconscious bias.

But if you ask for three names, it's harder for them to come up with three older white men, because they'll look at all three boxes and say, "Wait, I should include a woman."

There is something psychological, I think.

Now they ask for three nominees and have begun to receive more women.

In the last five years, four women have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry [and nine men].

I, right now, could name 20 women who undoubtedly deserve the Nobel as much as I or any of the men who have won it recently.

They just need to be nominated.

As far as I know, I am the only Nobel winner to have attended the ceremony with their same-sex partner.

Q.

Months before winning the Nobel Prize, you stated that being a woman has hurt you more in your scientific career than being a lesbian.

R.

Regarding the challenges you face in your academic career, I would say yes.

In other contexts, it depends.

There are places in the world where being gay is a crime and penalized.

But, in the world of science, I would say that unconscious biases against women were harder for me than biases against gay people.

Q.

Nobel winners normally travel around the world, because everywhere they want to have them give talks, but there are almost 70 countries that criminalize sexual acts between adults of the same sex.

In some, such as Saudi Arabia or Qatar, the punishment can even be the death penalty.

Qatar has just hosted the World Cup.

Would you go there or to Saudi Arabia to give a lecture?

A.

I can't go, it's not safe for me.

And not only for my safety: I have children who depend on me and I cannot go to places that are not safe.

There is too much at stake.

Carolyn Bertozzi receives the Nobel Prize from King Carl Gustaf of Sweden, on December 10, in Stockholm.Nanaka Adachi

Q.

This year there has been a greater diversity among the Nobel laureates.

You are openly lesbian and Svante Pääbo, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine, also talks calmly about his bisexual orientation.

Is something changing in the Nobel?

R.

I don't think it's a question of the Nobel Prize, I think it's society that has changed to the point of allowing me to have a job and come out as a lesbian.

I am aware of the privilege of being born when I was born.

If I had been born just 10 years earlier, I don't think we would be having this conversation.

In the United States, she would not have been able to get a job as a lesbian.

There was too much stigma, I should have stayed in the closet.

In the 1950s, there was still a witch hunt to root out homosexuals from government jobs.

Q.

The United States passed a law last month to shield marriage between people of the same sex.

You have just won the Nobel Prize, but in the opinion of some people in your own country, you cannot get married.

A.

It is so.

And in Qatar I don't deserve to be alive, even though I'm sure they'd love to take my cancer drugs if they get sick.

They will be happy with my scientific results, if it helps them to cure a tumor, but I would go to death row.

In Qatar I don't deserve to be alive, because I am a lesbian, although I am convinced that they will be happy to receive my anti-cancer drugs if they get sick

Q.

The first Muslim scientist to win a Nobel, the Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam, was a polygamist and attended the ceremony in Stockholm in 1979 with his two wives. It took more than 40 years to see a lesbian scientist go with his partner.

R.

As far as I know, I am the only Nobel winner who has gone to the ceremony with their same-sex partner.

There have been other openly gay people who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature or Peace, but not those in the scientific categories.

In science, I have surely been the first.

And at the ceremony no one blinked or was surprised, it was totally normal to take my partner, they treated her like any other couple.

It was great.

So to the next gay honorees I can say: "Go ahead, take your partners."

Q.

At the Nobel ceremony banquet, you proclaimed that "chemists are dreamers."

It is not the usual thought that adolescent students have.

R.

I know, but it is so.

Children must be told that we chemists are dreamers.

I'm a synthetic chemist, which means we make molecules that don't exist in the world.

We dream of structures.

What would happen if we make such a molecule?

Perhaps it will have a wonderful new color or an exquisite new flavor.

Or perhaps it will serve to cure an illness.

Or to make a new plastic that degrades in the environment without polluting the world.

We invent chemical compounds that have these cool properties, bring them to life, and basically create new kinds of matter that have never existed before.

And it all comes out of our brains.

That's what I mean when I say that chemists are dreamers.

You can follow

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber