Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on mirror-image molecules — SkimNews
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- Henri B Kagan (Paris-Sud University) and Kensō Soai (Tokyo University of Science) were awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis," the source states
- The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the prize Wednesday in Stockholm; each laureate receives an equal share of 12m Swedish kronor (about £900,000)
- Kagan's 1986 finding showed that a small imbalance between mirror-image forms of a catalyst could generate a greater excess of one mirror-image product than expected, the source explains
- Soai developed autocatalysis — where the product molecules catalyze their own production — and in 2003 demonstrated a reaction producing almost exclusively one mirror-image form, the first lab reproduction of biology's homochirality (proteins built from L-amino acids, DNA/RNA sugars from D-forms)
- Nobel committee member Prof Peter Somfai (Lund University) called Soai's experiment "probably the coolest experiment in organic chemistry ever," per the article
- The stakes are concrete for drug safety: thalidomide's two mirror-image forms had different biological effects, and thousands of children were born with defects in the early 1960s after the drug was prescribed for morning sickness, the source notes
Why it matters: Somfai said the discovery is "in the backsides of our heads all the time" — every chiral catalyst in pharmaceutical development draws on it. For drugmakers, the practical dividend is steering reactions toward a single mirror-image version of any drug whose left- and right-handed forms interact differently with the body, a lesson written in the 1960s thalidomide disaster.
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