LONDON -- Three scientists who discovered powerful techniques to predict and even design novel proteins -- the building blocks of life -- were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday. Their work used advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, and holds the potential to transform how new drugs are made.
The prize was awarded to David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, computer scientists at Google DeepMind, a British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory based in London.
Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said the award honored research that unraveled "a grand challenge in chemistry, and in particular in biochemistry, for decades."
"It's that breakthrough that gets awarded today," he said.
Proteins are complex molecules with thousands of atoms that twist, turn, loop and spiral in a countless array of shapes that determine their biological function. For decades, scientists have dreamed of being able to efficiently design and build new proteins.
Baker, 62, whose work has received funding from the National Institutes of Health since the 1990s, created a computer program called Rosetta that helped analyze information about existing proteins in comprehensive databases to build new proteins that don't exist in nature.
"It seems that you can almost construct any type of protein now with this technology," said Johan Åqvist of the Nobel committee.
Hassabis, 48, and Jumper, 39, created an artificial intelligence model that has predicted the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified, the committee added.
The duo "managed to crack the code. With skillful use of artificial intelligence, they made it possible to predict the complex structure of essentially any known protein in nature," Linke said.
The ability to custom design new proteins -- and better understand existing proteins -- could enable researchers to create new kinds of medicines and vaccines. It could also allow scientists to design new enzymes to break down plastics or other waste materials, and to design fine-tuned sensors for hazardous materials.
"I think there's fantastic prospects for making better medicines -- medicines that are smarter, that only work in the right time and place in the body," Baker told The Associated Press.
One example is a potential nasal spray that could slow or stop the rapid spread of specific viruses, such as covid-19, he said. Another is a medicine to disrupt the cascade of symptoms known as cytokine storm.
"That was always the holy grail. If you could figure out how protein sequences folded into their particular structures, then it might be possible to design protein sequences to fold into previously never seen structures that might be useful for us," said Jon Lorsch, a director at the NIH.
Baker told the AP he found out he won the Nobel during the early hours of the morning alongside his wife, who immediately started screaming.
"So it was a little deafening, too," he said.
In an online news briefing, Hassabis said the Nobel was "an unbelievable honor of a lifetime."
One of Britain's leading tech figures, he co-founded the AI research lab DeepMind in 2010, which was acquired by Google in 2014. DeepMind's past breakthroughs include developing an AI system that mastered the Chinese game of Go and was able to defeat the game's human world champion.
Hassabis said he was just having a "normal morning" at home when he eventually got the call. The Nobel committee didn't initially have his number and first managed to get hold of his wife, but she hung up on them a few times.
"It's so incredible. It's so unreal at this moment," said Jumper, a researcher and director at Google DeepMind. "And it's wonderful."
In the past, researchers labored for months or years to decode the structure of a single complex protein, but the AI model created by the DeepMind researchers, called AlphaFold, "can determine the structure of a protein pretty accurately within a few seconds or minutes," Hassabis told the AP in an interview, adding that this saves researchers "years of potentially painstaking experimental work."
Baker said Hassabis and Jumper's artificial intelligence work gave his team a huge boost.
"The breakthroughs made by Demis and John on protein structure prediction really highlighted to us the power that AI could have," said Baker. "And that led us to apply these AI methods to protein design."
Information for this article was contributed by Matt O'Brien, Mike Corder and Daniel Niemann of The Associated Press.
FILE - A close-up view of a Nobel Prize medal at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Hannele Ruohola-Baker hugs her husband American biochemist David Baker, 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, at the University of Washington on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Seattle. Lynda Stuart, executive director at the Institute for Protein Design, looks on at right. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
American biochemist David Baker, 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, listens during a press conference at the University of Washington on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
University of Washington president Ana Mari Cauce hugs American biochemist David Baker, 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, during news conference at the university on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
This combo of pictures show American biochemist David Baker, from left, American researcher John Jumper and Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind Technologies, the AI division behind Gemini. (UW Medicine/Google DeepMind via AP/AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
American biochemist David Baker, 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry speaks on the phone with the two other winners Demis Hassabis and John Jumper at his home, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Seattle. (Ian C Haydon via AP)
Researcher John Jumper, left, and Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind Technologies, the AI division behind Gemini, speak to Associated Press at the Google DeepMind offices in London, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024 after being awarded with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)
American biochemist David Baker speaks to reporters at his home, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Seattle. (Ian C Haydon via AP)
American biochemist David Baker poses for a photo at his home on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)