• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe

Drug Delivery Business

  • Clinical Trials
  • Research & Development
  • Drug-Device Combinations
  • FDA
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Policy

Nobel chemistry prize goes to molecular machinery

October 5, 2016 By Sarah Faulkner

Molecular elevatorA group of European scientists won the 2016 Nobel Prize for chemistry for developing the “world’s smallest machines,” which could be used to revolutionize drug delivery.

Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringer claimed the $931,000 prize (8 million Swedish crowns) for work that Feringer described as having “endless” potential, according to Reuters.

“Think of a tiny micro-robot that a doctor in the future will inject into your blood and that goes to search for a cancer cell or goes to deliver a drug, for instance,” Feringer told the news service.

“We can still only guess at the thrilling developments ahead of us,” the Nobel committee said. “However, we do have a definite answer to [the] initial question, ‘How small can you make machinery?’ – At least 1,000 times thinner than a strand of [human] hair.”

The committee likened this era of development of molecular machinery to the advent of the electric motor in the 1830s, when scientists created spinning cranks and wheels without knowing how they would drastically change fields like transportation.

Feringer is a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands; Sauvage is a professor at the University of Strasbourg and director of research at France’s National Center for Scientific Research; and Stoddart, a Scot, is a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Stoddart said the news of the award was unexpected.

“When it happens, it takes your breath away,” he told Reuters.

It’s the 3rd Nobel awarded this year, after Yoshinori Ohsumi earlier this week won the medicine award and a trio of British-born scientists claimed the physics prize for their work studying unusual states of matter.

Filed Under: Featured, Research & Development Tagged With: Nobel Prize

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

  • Senseonics closes public offering, private placement with Abbott
  • Embecta eyes shift from insulin delivery to broader medical supplies focus
  • Medtronic earns expanded CE mark for Prevail paclitaxel-coated balloon
  • Sequel Med Tech to pair automated insulin delivery system with Abbott’s future dual glucose-ketone sensor
  • Medtronic to separate Diabetes business unit

Primary Sidebar

“ddb
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest news and trends happening now in drug delivery.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.

Footer

Drug Delivery Business News Logo

MassDevice Medical NETWORK

MassDevice
DeviceTalks
Medical Tubing + Extrusion
Medical Design & Outsourcing
MedTech100 Index
Drug Discovery & Development
Pharmaceutical Processing World
Medical Design Sourcing
R&D World

DRUG DELIVERY BUSINESS NEWS

Subscribe to Drug Delivery’s E-Newsletter
Advertise with us
About
Contact us
Privacy
Listen to our Weekly Podcasts

Copyright © 2025 · WTWH Media LLC and its licensors. All rights reserved.
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media.

Privacy Policy | RSS