Carolyn Bertozzi

Carolyn Bertozzi shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of bioorthogonal click chemistry, which she invented to study glycans on living cell surfaces without disrupting cellular function, enabling breakthrough discoveries in how cancer cells use glycan shields to evade immune detection. She pioneered the concept of glyco-immune checkpoints, demonstrating that tumor cell surface sialic acid glycans engage Siglec inhibitory receptors on immune cells to suppress anti-tumor immunity. She developed sialidase-antibody conjugates that strip immunosuppressive glycans from tumor surfaces to restore immune recognition. Her work has opened an entirely new frontier of glycan-targeted cancer immunotherapy.