Bertozzi filed U.S. Patent application 6,570,040 for chemoselective ligation chemistry, foundational to her later bioorthogonal chemistry work.
On January 19, 2001, Carolyn Bertozzi, together with her co-inventors, filed a patent application titled "Chemoselective ligation" which would later be issued as US Patent 6,570,040 B2. This filing came at the very outset of her development of what would become known as bioorthogonal chemistry, the field for which she would win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry two decades later.
Chemoselective ligation refers to chemical reactions that can join two molecules together with high specificity, even in complex biological environments containing many other reactive functional groups. This concept was central to Bertozzi's vision of designing reactions that could occur inside living cells and organisms without disrupting natural biochemical processes—work that she began articulating and developing around 2001.
This patent filing represents one of the earliest legal and scientific documentation points for the conceptual framework that would grow into an entire field of chemical biology. The chemistry protected by this patent enabled scientists to label and visualize biomolecules such as glycans in living systems, opening new avenues for biomedical imaging, diagnostics, and drug development.
The timing of this filing, occurring the same year she began coining the term "bioorthogonal chemistry," illustrates how closely her foundational scientific ideas were tied to practical, patentable innovations—a pattern that would repeat throughout her career and contribute to her recognition as one of the most impactful inventor-scientists of her generation.