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Baker, Hassabis and Jumper win Nobel chemistry prize

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Prize awarded for work on the structure of proteins

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Chemistry third award in this year's Nobel line-up

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Prizes announced through course of week

By Johan Ahlander, Niklas Pollard

STOCKHOLM, Oct 9 (Reuters) - U.S. Scientists David Baker

and John Jumper and Britain's Demis Hassabis won the 2024 Nobel

Prize in Chemistry, the award-giving body said on Wednesday, for

their work on understanding the structure of proteins.

Half the prize was awarded to Baker "for computational

protein design" while the other half was shared by Hassabis and

Jumper "for protein structure prediction", said the Royal

Swedish Academy of Sciences, which makes the award.

Baker is a professor at the University of Washington, in

Seattle, while Hassabis is CEO of Google DeepMind, the AI

research subsidiary of Google, where Jumper also works

as senior research scientist.

Hassabis and Jumper utilised artificial intelligence to

predict the structure of almost all known proteins, while Baker

learned how to master life's building blocks and create entirely

new proteins, the award-giving body said.

"One of the discoveries being recognised this year concerns

the construction of spectacular proteins," the academy said in a

statement. "The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream:

predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences."

The prize, widely regarded as among the most prestigious in

the scientific world, is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($1.1

million).

"I'm really excited about all the ways in which protein

design makes the world a better place in health, medicine and

really, outside technology," Baker said by phone to the press

conference announcing the prize.

In 2003, Baker was able to use amino acids, often described

as life's building blocks, to design a new protein that was

unlike any existing one, the academy said.

That opened the door to the rapid creation of different

proteins for uses in areas such as pharmaceuticals, vaccines,

nanomaterials and even tiny sensors.

"He developed computational tools that now enable scientists

to design spectacular new proteins with entirely novel shapes

and functions, opening endless possibilities for the greatest

benefits to humankind," Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel

Committee for Chemistry, said of Baker's contribution.

In 2020, Hassabis and Jumper presented an AI model called

AlphaFold2. With its help, they have been able to predict the

structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that

researchers have identified, the academy said.

THIRD PRIZE ANNOUNCED

The third award to be handed out every year, the chemistry prize

follows those for medicine and physics announced earlier this

week.

The Nobel prizes were established in the will of dynamite

inventor and wealthy businessman Alfred Nobel and are awarded to

"those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the

greatest benefit to humankind".

First handed out in 1901, 15 years after Nobel's death, it

is awarded for achievements in medicine, physics, chemistry,

literature and peace. Recipients in each category share the

prize sum that has been adjusted over the years.

The economics prize is a later addition funded by the

Swedish central bank.

Chemistry, close to Alfred Nobel's heart and the discipline

most applicable to his own work as an inventor, may not always

be the most headline-grabbing of the prizes, but past recipients

include scientific greats such as radioactivity pioneers Ernest

Rutherford and Marie Curie.

Last year's chemistry award went to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus

and Aleksey Ekimov for their discovery of tiny clusters of atoms

known as quantum dots, widely used today to create colours in

flat screens, light emitting diode (LED) lamps and devices that

help surgeons see blood vessels in tumours.

Alongside the cash prize, the winners will be presented a

medal by the Swedish king on Dec. 10, followed by a lavish

banquet in Stockholm city hall.

($1 = 10.3632 Swedish crowns)