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Nobel Laureate speaker series 2022
After a two-year break, we are finally looking forward to getting a taste of Nobel Prize air in Dresden again. Novaled also sponsors the Lectures again this year.
First lecture:
Sir Andre Geim (UK; Nobel Prize in Physics 2010).
A Random Walk to Graphene (Wednesday, June 08, 2022, 7 p.m.)
The discovery of graphene is truly one of the “eureka moments” of our time.
It is the story of how Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov realized that the discarded strips of Scotch Tape routinely used to produce clean surfaces on blocks of graphite were not useless – but might actually be covered with a type of carbon only known in theory. A material consisting of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice and only one atom thick: graphene. In 2004 Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov successfully produced this material, graphene, and mapped its properties: incredibly thin but still incredibly strong, good heat and electrical conductivity, almost entirely transparent yet very dense. For their studies of this „wonder material“, the scientists were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics - only seven years after having described their initial discovery.
Second lecture:
Sir Gregory Winter (GB; Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018).
Harnessing evolution to make new medicines (Wednesday, June 22, 2022, 7 p.m.)
Evolution – the adaption of species to different environments – has created an enormous diversity of life. Gregory Winter has used the same principles – genetic change and selection – for the directed evolution of antibodies. Specifically, he used „phage display“, a method where a bacteriophage – a virus that infects bacteria with its genes – is used to evolve new proteins. Today, this method can be used to develop targeted antibody therapies for specific diseases. Winter and his team used it to produce the first drug based entirely on an antibody in the 1990s, which was approved in 2002 as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. Since then, the method has been used to develop other antibody drugs for metastatic cancer, autoimmune diseases and toxins, among others. For the phage display of peptides and antibodies, Sir Gregory Winter, together with George P. Smith was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Enjoy the lectures!
08/06/2022