NIH Grantee Wins 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize medallion.copyright Nobel Foundation

The 2016 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to National Institutes of Health grantee Sir J. Fraser Stoddart of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Stoddart shares the award jointly with Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Ph.D., of the University of Strasbourg, France and Bernard L. Feringa, Ph.D., of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, for their design and production of molecular machines.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said their work has “miniaturized machines and taken chemistry to a new dimension.”

Molecular machines are tiny molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added. The machines are a thousand times thinner than a strand of hair. These machines may be used in the development of new materials, sensors and create energy-storage mechanisms too tiny to be seen with the naked eye.

“Another application of these molecular machines could be delivering drugs within the body, for example, by applying them directly to cancer cells,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "NIH is proud to have supported this work."

NIH’s National Cancer Institute began supporting James Fraser Stoddart in 2010 and has provided more than $2 million in funding.

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