The BBVA Foundation is a non-profit organization focusing on promoting initiatives in the fields of science, culture, and social progress. It supports research, innovation, and projects aimed at fostering positive social change, often through awards, grants, and partnerships. The press release below is an excerpt from their full release announcing the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, which celebrate groundbreaking work in various scientific fields.
Working independently, the new laureates "have led global thinking in the three main research areas devoted to understanding and applying catalysis, covering the entire spectrum of this fundamental field," said committee member Hongkun Park, Mark Hyman Jr Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at Harvard University (United States). Their combined output has paved the way for a more efficient, sustainable chemistry.
Corma spearheaded the development of solid catalysts from porous materials and holds more than 100 patents with applications that are now being used to improve the efficiency of chemical processes and cut back on pollutant emissions in the production of fuels, plastics, cosmetics and food.
The metal-based catalysts developed by Hartwig, active in the liquid phase, have been game changers in the manufacture of drug treatments for numerous conditions ranging from leukemia to HIV or depression. And new applications are now being sought for plastic waste recycling.
Schwarz has succeeded in analyzing gas-phase chemical reactions atom by atom, elucidating their function with an unprecedented level of detail, a fundamental advance that has already served to cut back on waste production in industrial processes while opening the door to new catalysis applications in multiple domains.
"Avelino Corma is a researcher who starts from fundamental, basic science, then works outwards to apply his results to social challenges like sustainability. The fact that the committee considers him deserving of an internationally prestigious award like the Frontiers of Knowledge is a testament to his scientific stature. And in truth he fits perfectly with the name of the scheme, because his foremost concern is to move the frontiers of knowledge," said José Capilla, the Rector of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), who nominated the Valencian researcher.
"They say that science is full of researchers who do good things, but very few who actually do new things. John Hartwig not only does new things but he does so time and time again. He is one of those people who carve out paths the rest can only follow," said his nominator Pedro J. Pérez, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Huelva and Head of the Center for Research in Sustainable Chemistry (CIQSO). "I believe the committee made the right decision in distinguishing him alongside professors Corma and Schwarz. Bringing the three together extends this recognition to the whole field of chemistry, and catalysis in particular."
"This award is extremely well judged given the importance of catalysis research, which accounts for 90 percent of all chemical industry production processes and 30 percent of the world's GDP. Helmut Schwarz has done real basic science, but has also proved it experimentally. It is to him we owe the insight of incorporating elements of quantum mechanics into basic knowledge of catalytic reactions," said Jesús Ugalde, Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of the Basque Country and a collaborator of Professor Schwarz's.
Catalysts to produce medicines against cancer, HIV and hepatitis
The metal-based catalysts developed by John Hartwig have changed the way drugs are manufactured for conditions ranging from leukemia to HIV or depression. He has excelled in the development of homogeneous catalysis, in which both the catalyst and the molecules undergoing the chemical reaction are in the liquid phase, dissolved in a solution. This enables reactions to occur at relatively low temperatures and at very precise sites within the molecule. “There’s a whole series of medicines approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for diseases like hepatitis C, HIV, depression, psoriasis and leukemia, that rely on the availability of molecules created from reactions developed in my lab,” the new laureate explains.
Hartwig has spent much of his career working on organometallic catalysts, formed by molecules containing both an organic carbon fragment and a transition metal such as platinum. It is precisely the metal-carbon bond that supports chemical reactions by providing a platform on which they can occur.
The awardee has also modified certain enzymes – which, within biological organisms, act as catalysts – by exchanging the naturally occurring metal for another, in order to change their reactivity. Recently, Hartwig was able to insert these “bionic enzymes” into a microorganism and have it make the reagents, the chemicals that react with that enzyme. The chemical reaction, in other words, takes place inside the cells, creating artificial products through a biosynthetic pathway.
Among the reactions Hartwig has focused on most are those occurring at the site of carbon-hydrogen bond cleavage. “These are very strong bonds that are mostly unreactive,” explains the Berkeley chemist, who has developed catalysts that can help break the bond so it accommodates the desired chemical reaction. These catalysts have already been put to work in the production of a key compound for anti-cancer pharmaceuticals and another two against HIV. “It’s really exciting to watch things progress from the very, very fundamental discovery of cleaving a carbon-hydrogen bond to being able to develop large-scale reactions, with thousands of pounds of molecules.”
Another of the awardee’s lauded contributions concerns the formation of the carbon-nitrogen bond; “a reaction – he explains – that doesn’t occur in the absence of a catalyst.” The catalyst he and his team developed to create this bond has led to drugs for depression, HIV and hepatitis C.
Hartwig has since turned his attention to the polymers making up the plastics we use daily, trying to deconstruct their bonds and isolate their components so that they can serve to make new plastic. “Right now plastic is recycled mechanically,” he points out, “but this new method would be chemical recycling, perhaps a future solution to manage the huge amount of plastic waste we generate.”
John Hartwig Bio
John Hartwig (Elmhurst, Illinois, United States, 1964) completed a degree in chemistry at Princeton University, then went on to earn a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1990. That same year he began a postdoctoral fellowship for the American Cancer Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He moved to Yale University in 1992, rising through the ranks to become Professor of Chemistry and finally Irénée DuPont Chair in Chemistry. In 2006, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois-Champaign, where he was Kenneth L. Rinehart Jr. Professor of Chemistry until 2011. He then returned to U.C. Berkeley, where he is currently Henry Rapoport Professor of Chemistry. The author of over 400 papers, he has also garnered more than 98,000 citations, holds more than 20 patents and in 2010 published the book Organotransition Metal Chemistry – From Bonding to Catalysis.