The Dickson Prize in Medicine

The Dickson Prize in Medicine is awarded annually to a leading American investigator who is engaged in innovative, paradigm-shifting biomedical research. Previous winners >

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2022 Dickson Prize Goes to Carolyn Bertozzi

Prize is Pitt School of Medicine’s most prestigious annual award

Carolyn Bertozzi, PhD, is the 2022 recipient of the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s highest honor.

Bertozzi founded the field of "bioorthogonal chemistry," a class of chemical reactions compatible with living systems.

Bertozzi’s research interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology, with an emphasis on studies of how sugar molecules on cell surfaces are important contributors to diseases like cancer, inflammation and bacterial infection. Her lab has identified ways to modify these sugar molecules through bioorthogonal chemistry – a method that employs chemical reactions that do not interfere with normal cellular processes. This approach has allowed her to develop new therapeutic approaches to treat many diseases, including most recently in the field of cancer immunotherapy. 

Bertozzi is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.