By Niklas Pollard and Kate Kelland | STOCKHOLM/LONDON
A trio of European scientists has won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing molecular machines that could one day be injected to fight cancer or used to make new types of materials and energy storage devices.
Frenchman Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Scotland’s J. Fraser Stoddart and Dutchman Bernard Feringa developed molecules that produce mechanical motion in response to a stimulus, allowing them to perform specific tasks, the Nobel Academy said on Wednesday in awarding the 8 million Swedish crown ($931,000) prize.
Such molecular machines can be developed in smart medicines that seek out disease or damage and deliver drugs to fight or fix it, and in smart materials that can adapt in response to external triggers such as changes in light or temperature.
cont. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-prize-chemistry-idUSKCN1250WA