The prestigious institution recognized Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and David Baker, three scientists whose use of artificial intelligence has transformed research into protein structures.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to the American David Baker and to a tandem formed by the British Demis Hassabis and the American John Jumper, for having unlocked the secrets of proteins, relying on artificial intelligence ( AI).
The jury saluted these researchers who succeeded “to crack the code of amazing protein structures” and their discoveries “offer enormous potential” to revolutionize both the knowledge of living things and the design of new drugs. David Baker, a 62-year-old biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle, was awarded “for computational protein design”while Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, from Google DeepMind, the subsidiary dedicated to AI of the American giant, were for their work on “protein structure prediction” via artificial intelligence, according to the press release.
“One of the discoveries awarded this year concerns the spectacular construction of proteins. The other is realizing a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structure from amino acid sequences. These two discoveries open up vast perspectives”summarized Heiner Linke, president of the Nobel committee.
David Baker “achieved the almost impossible feat of building entirely new proteins”explains the jury. Proteins are molecules composed of amino acids, which serve as all-purpose tools within all living cells. In 2003, he succeeded, “from these constituent elements of life” to form a new protein different from all existing ones.
Questioned by the Nobel jury, David Baker said “very enthusiastic and very honored”. “I was sleeping when the phone rang, I picked it up and heard the announcement, then my wife started screaming”.
For their part, Demis Hassabis, aged 48, and John Jumper, 39, developed an AI model called AlphaFold2 in 2020 to determine the structure of proteins. “Since the 1970s, researchers have tried to predict the structures of proteins from their amino acid, but this task was notoriously difficult”underlines the jury. “With the help of this AI, they managed to predict the structure of almost all of the 200 million proteins identified by the researchers”he adds.
The two men, cited among the favorites, had already received the prestigious Lasker Prize in 2023. “I was stunned and blank for a few minutes”Mr. Hassabis told the TT agency. Of their work with John Jumper, he felt that “this has been a real challenge for computational biology”.
“We used all modern machine learning techniques and known structures discovered over the last 50 years, and we managed to build a system capable of folding and finding the structure of virtually every protein known to science”he added.
Awarded since 1901, the Nobel Prizes recognize people who have worked for “the benefit of humanity”, in accordance with the wish of their creator, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Last year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to a trio for their research on nanoparticles called quantum dots: Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov, born respectively in France, the United States and the USSR.
As with other Nobels, the chemistry prize has been criticized for its lack of diversity and equality. Since 1901, only eight women have been crowned, out of 114 winners. This year, no woman received one of the three Science Prizes.
The season continues with the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in Oslo. The Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded since 1969, will be awarded on Monday October 14.
For the winners of the 2024 vintage, the check accompanying the prize is for eleven million crowns (920,000 euros), to be shared in the event of multiple winners.
