2 Americans, 1 British scientist win Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Three scientists — two from the U.S. and one from Britain — share the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for harnessing the power of evolution to produce novel proteins used in everything from environmentally friendly detergents and biofuels to cancer drugs.

Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology, George Smith from the University of Missouri and Gregory Winter of Britain's MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology were awarded the prize for pioneering science in enzymes and antibodies.

The fruits of their work include the world's top-selling prescription medicine — the antibody injection Humira sold by AbbVie for treating rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.

Arnold, only the fifth woman to win a chemistry Nobel, was awarded half of the nine million Swedish krona (about $1.29 million Cdn) prize, while Smith and Winter shared the other half.

"This year's Nobel laureates in chemistry have been inspired by the power of evolution and used the same principles — genetic change and selection — to develop proteins that solve mankind's chemical problems," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

'I breed molecules'

Arnold, 62, is the second woman to win a Nobel Prize this year. Donna Strickland, from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, shared the physics award on Tuesday.

"Some people breed cats and dogs. I breed molecules," Arnold told Reuters after learning of the award, which she said had come as a complete surprise.

Her research on enzymes — proteins that catalyze chemical reactions — laid the bedrock for the development of better industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

"There are enzymes now in detergents that we use in our dishwasher and have been evolved by this process. There are also enzymes that can create new types of biofuels or that catalyze the formation of building blocks for new medicines," said Claes Gustafsson, chairman of the Nobel chemistry committee.

"All this you can do with enzymes that Frances Arnold has developed."

Smith, 77, developed a method using a virus that infects bacteria to produce new proteins.

Reached at his home in Columbia, Miss., Smith was quick to credit the work of others in earning his prize. 

"Very few research breakthroughs are novel. Virtually all of them build on what went on before. It's happenstance. That was certainly the case with my work."

Winter, 67, used the same method for the directed evolution of antibodies, with the aim of producing new pharmaceuticals.

He said he was surprised by the huge commercial success of the resulting antibody drugs, which he put down in large part to the high prices that drug companies have managed to charge for them.

"I had no idea they would be so commercially successful ... it was a complete paradigm shift," he told reporters in a conference call. "Antibodies as a pharmaceutical product are still growing great guns."

The prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were created and funded in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901.

For the first time in decades, the Nobel lineup will not feature a literature award this year after a rift within the Swedish Academy over a rape scandal involving the husband of a board member left it unable to select a winner.

The science and peace prizes are selected by other bodies. Chemistry is the third of this year's Nobel Prizes after the winners of the medicine and physics awards were announced earlier this week.

With files from The Associated Press