Sanford awarded 2024 Janssen Prize for achievements in organic synthesis

Melanie S. Sanford, professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan and ACS member, received the 2024 Janssen Prize for Creativity in Organic Synthesis. The prize has honored chemists in academia from around the world, including Nobel laureates, for their outstanding contributions to the field of organic synthesis since 1986. Sanford is the first woman to receive the award. Johnson & Johnson (J&J) presented the prize to Sanford at the Belgian Organic Synthesis Symposium in Liège.

“Continuing to develop novel synthetic methods is crucial to enable us to synthesize our drugs more efficiently and also to enable us to access the complex molecules often required to drug today’s biological targets,” Richard Tillyer, global head of discovery, product development, and supply at J&J Innovative Medicine, writes in an email to C&EN. “The Janssen Prize for Creativity in Organic Synthesis celebrates the bold, innovative, and creative thinking in this field, which will drive future advances in drug discovery and development.”

Sanford was selected for her contributions to the development of both mild and inexpensive fluorination processes and new transition metal–catalyzed carbon-hydrogen functionalization methods. Her research, which focuses on developing new synthetic methods for creating carbon-fluorine bonds more efficiently and selectively, has profound applications in drug development, agrochemicals, and positron emission tomography imaging. The addition of fluorine to a molecule often alters its properties and interactions with enzymes and target molecules in ways favorable for pharmaceutical and agrochemical applications, thus making her work invaluable for biologists and medicinal chemists working in these industries.