The 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to a Frenchman and a Japanese scientist who made medicines "purer"

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to French scientist Henri P. Kagan of Paris-Sud University and Japanese scientist Kenso Suai of Tokyo University of Science, "for the discovery of nonlinear and self-catalytic effects in asymmetric organic synthesis."

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The prize relates to an ancient chemical mystery connected with one of the strangest properties of chemical compounds: some molecules, including amino acids that make up the proteins in our bodies, can exist in two forms with almost the same composition, but one looks like the other in a mirror image. This property is known as "chiralization".

But life does not use both forms equally. For example, the proteins in our bodies are built primarily from one specific form of amino acids. Chemists call this tendency to use one direction "chiral homogeneity," and the secret behind it has remained a question that has been echoed in the corridors of chemistry departments for more than a century.

The next step came with Kenso Suai. In 1995, he described a reaction based on self-catalyzing, meaning that the molecule produced by the reaction acts as a catalyst to produce more molecules similar to it.

Thus, if a very slight increase appears in one of the two images, it can help itself to reproduce more quickly, and the advantage gradually increases.

In 2003, Suay achieved an even more remarkable result, presenting a reaction that could result in the formation of only one, almost identical, mirror image. According to the Nobel Committee, no chemical system other than life itself had previously been known to achieve this level of chiral homogeneity.

The importance of the discovery goes beyond explaining a fundamental mystery in the chemistry of life, as its significance is clearly evident in the pharmaceutical industry, because two mirror images of the same compound may not perform the same function within the body; one may bind to the required biological target efficiently, while the other is less effective or causes different effects.