Bertozzi filed a landmark patent application for compositions and methods to modify biomolecules, protecting core bioorthogonal chemistry techniques.
On February 18, 2005, Carolyn Bertozzi filed a patent application titled "Compositions and methods for modification of biomolecules" with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This application, which would later be issued as US Patent 7,807,619 B2, protected core methods underlying what is now recognized as bioorthogonal chemistry—the scientific achievement for which Bertozzi would win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry seventeen years later.
This filing represents a pivotal moment in the legal and scientific documentation of Bertozzi's most significant contribution to science: the development of chemical reactions that can be performed inside living cells and organisms without interfering with the native biochemistry of the cell. This breakthrough allowed scientists to label, track, and study biomolecules such as glycans, proteins, and lipids in real time within living systems, revolutionizing fields ranging from cancer diagnostics to developmental biology.
The patent's significance was later underscored by the National Inventors Hall of Fame, which specifically cited this body of work when inducting Bertozzi in 2017 for "inventing the field of bioorthogonal chemistry and its applications to medicine and diagnostics."
This 2005 filing thus stands as one of the most historically important dates in her patent record, marking the formal legal protection of ideas that would reshape chemical biology and eventually be recognized with science's highest honor, the Nobel Prize, in 2022.