WOMEN IN CHEMISTRY Ask Bertozzi what she considers to be her most significant achievement and she won't name her discovery of a method to make sugar markers on cell surfaces or her design and synthesis of a new organic material used to make contact lenses safer for extended use. Nor does she name any of her awards, which include the 2001 ACS N I 9 8 6 , A YOUNG COLLEGE SOPHOMORE toral fellow in the immunology program Award in Pure Chemistry (C&EN, Jan. 1, made a big decision that would influat the University of California, San Fran2001, page 35), the 2001 Donald Sterling ence the direction of her future career: cisco. There, she worked with professor Noyce Prize for Excellence in She changed her major from biology Steven D Rosen to study the acTeaching, the 2001 UC Berketo chemistry. tivity of endothelial oligosacley Distinguished Teaching charides in promoting cell adheThe gamble paid off. Sixteen years latAward, or a MacArthur Fellowsion at sites of inflammation. er, Carolyn R. Bertozzi is one of chemship (1999). istry's rising stars and excels in a profesIn 1996, she returned to UC "I was most proud to have sion she loves. Now an associate professor Berkeley as a faculty member and CELEBRATING graduated my first Ph.D. stuof chemistry and molecular and cell biolhas remained there. Since the 75 YEARS dent and see her develop her ogy at the University of California, Berkestart of her independent profesOF THE ACS own proposal as a postdoctoral ley, she is credited with pioneering research sional career, Bertozzi has earned WOMEN fellow," Bertozzi says. Following on enzymes that regulate the biological ac20 awards and honors for her CHEMISTS COMMITTEE her students' careers gives her a tivity of glycoconjugates and with develresearch and several more for sense of pride. She remembers oping new methods for engineering the teaching. She also sits on the scifondly the rush she felt when she saw the chemistry and biological recognition acentific advisory boards of four companies tivity of cell surfaces. and is cofounder of afifth,Thios Biotech- nameplates belonging to another former student, herfirstpostdoctoral fellow, fixed nology, and she holds five commercial Bertozzi is also head of the chemical to the doors of his new faculty office and patents. biology department at Lawrence Berkelabs. ley National Laboratory and an Among those who have helped investigator of the prestigious Bertozzi forge her own successful Howard Hughes Medical Institute. career is University of Wisconsin Her laboratory studies the molecuchemistry professor Laura L. Kieslar basis of cell-cell interactions relsling, who gave a talk at UC Berkeley evant to disease states, and her rewhen Bertozzi was studying there. search involves oligosaccharide "It was an event I will not forget," structures correlating with inflamBertozzi says, "because she was the mation and tumor metastasis and first female chemist I had seen give the development of new ways to ala research seminar, believe it or not." ter those structures using chemical High school biology teacher Martools. garet Schwartz was outstanding, Born in Lexington, Mass., in Bertozzi recalls, "and she was the rea1966, Bertozzi began her education son I went off to college with the inin nearby Cambridge as a biology tention of majoring in biology" major at Harvard University. During Bertozzi's mother and her father, the two mandatory semesters of ora physics professor at Massachusetts ganic chemistry she took as a sophInstitute of Technology, encouraged omore, she found her calling and their daughters to pursue careers in switched her major to chemistry science. Her older sister, Andrea, is with the encouragement of profesnow a professor of math and physics sors David A. Evans and George M. at Duke University Whitesides. After finishing her University of Pittsburgh profesbachelor's degree summa cum laude sorJosephJ. Grabowski, with whom in 1988, she went to UC Berkeley to Bertozzi did research as an underwork on a chemistry doctorate with graduate when he was at Harvard, professor Mark D Bednarski. Her challenged her with a project she research involved the synthesis and thought was beyond her ability. "This biological investigation of C-glycogave me the chance to rise to the ocsides, a class of hydrolytically stable CONFIDENCE BUILDER Bertozzi takes great casion, and in the end, accomplish carbohydrate mimics. more than I thought I could at that Five years later, she migrated back pride in seeing her graduate students develop stage," Bertozzi says. 'This was a conto the field of biology as a postdoc- their own independent careers.
THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
Carolyn Bertozzi took chances and experimented with the unfamiliar on her pathway to success
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fîdence-building experience of unparalleled proportion in my life." Kevan M. Shokat, then a grad student teaching assistant for one of Bertozzi's bioorganic chemistry classes at UC Berkeley and now a professor at UC San Francisco, encouraged her to take a great leap into a totally different field and environment for her postdoctoral studies. Then Rosen took a chance on Bertozzi, a synthetic chemist, when he invited her to postdoc in his immunology lab and taught her the basics of cell biology and genetics. While working on her degrees, Bertozzi had very positive experiences overall. When asked what difficulties women face in the field of chemistry, she recalls a few encounters with instructors and fellow students that left her feeling alienated and isolated. Women were a minority, or absent, in most labs at that time. The situation changed when she arrived at UC San Francisco, where there were many more women at all levels, including the senior faculty "I felt more enfranchised and included in the profession during those years," she says. "The experience made a lasting impression, and I try to propagate it with the students in my own lab." She believes the field is now different from 10 years ago and her female students appear to be more confident and have higher expectations and a greater sense of entitlement than did women of her own generation. But challenges still exist, she says, even for successful senior faculty. Women chemists in academia are challenged to find ways to deal with the sense of isolation that comes with being outnumbered by men in venues such as committees, faculty meetings, review panels, and conferences. The number of women participating at these levels needs to be increased, she says, adding that she has noticed better atmospheres in chemistry departments that include more women. When asked what advice she would give young women, and men, beginning careers in chemistry, Bertozzi replies: "I would tell them to invest infindingout their own scientific interests and to follow them in whatever direction they lead and that they are headed for a tremendously exciting, multifaceted career with numerous opportunities. I would tell them that they made a good choice."
CARBOHYDRATES
VACCINES BY AUTOMATED S NTHESIS Oligosaccharide-based vaccines show promising activity against malaria, leishmaniasis
According to the Malaria Foundation International, each year 300 million to 500 million people become ill with malaria The disease causes chills, fever, sweating, and anemia, and it sometimes affects the brain and kidneys. Several million people annuprocess. One of those is the team of assistant ally die of the disease, including 200 to professor of chemistry Peter H. Seeberg- 300 children per hour worldwide. Chloroer at Massachusetts Institute of Technol- quine and a number of other antimalarial drugs are available to treat it, but many variants of Plasmodium falciparum, the malaria organism, have developed resistance to the drugs. Alternative drugs are thus needed. But research on such drugs has not been well supported, largely because malaria patients tend to be poor and are unable to afford expensive advanced medicines. An effective vaccine could help solve the malaria problem, and vaccine candidates have exhibited some efficacy in animal tests. But a safe and effective malaria vaccine for AUTOMATED Seeberger (left) and Hewitt hold a people has yet to be develstructure of the malaria toxin oligosaccharide analog oped, in part because funding they synthesized. for research and clinical trials ogy, which developed a novel automated has been inadequate. The malaria toxin produced by Ρfalci solid-phase oligosaccharide synthesizer that eases access to carbohydrate struc- parum contains a carbohydrate moiety that tures {Science, 291,1523 (2001) and C&EN, could presumably be mimicked to create a vaccine. Louis Schofield and Aug. 28,2000, page 8}. The coworkers in the Infection & automated oligosaccharide Immunity Division of the synthesis technology makes it Walter & Eliza Hall Institute possible to produce biologiof Medical Research, Mel cally interesting oligosacchabourne, Australia, identified rides in about Wo of the time the complex native oligosac previously required, Seebergcharide. In an initial vaccine er tells C&EN. study, "they found that they Now, he and his coworkers could give healthy mice the are beginning to apply this native oligosaccharide vac technology to specific medcine, and in about two-thirds ical applications. At last fall's or three-quarters of the cases Welch Conference on Chemthe mice did not die when ical Research, in Houston, Schofield challenged with malaria," See Seeberger described fully synThhpr
