The Nobel Prize in chemistry honors a process that facilitates drug manufacturing

Frenchman Henri Kagan and Japanese scientist Kenso Soai were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for their research on an asymmetric catalytic process fundamental to drug development.

"Their discoveries have played a decisive role for chemists designing reactions for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals," the Nobel Committee stated in a press release.

Both were honored "for the discovery of nonlinear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis," the jury stated.

All amino acids exist in two mirror-image variants, but only one of them is found in the proteins of the body's cells.

The other rarely occurs in nature, a phenomenon known as "homochirality," explained the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Scientists have long wondered how this process occurs, and the discoveries by the two Nobel laureates have made it possible to "induce chemical reactions that lead to homochirality," the jury noted.

"Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai have provided a solution to a chemical mystery dating back more than a century: how homochirality can arise spontaneously. The chemical reactions they have developed are spectacular," said Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Research related to this concept had already been honored with the Nobel Prize in 2001.

However, Professor Kagan, considered, both in France and around the world, to be the "father" of this technique, did not receive it. This prompted protests at the time from the French Ministry of Research.

Henri Kagan, 95, works as a professor at the University of Paris-Saclay.

Kenso Soai, 76, teaches at the University of Natural Sciences in Tokyo. He was out shopping near his home when he received the good news.

"It's the most incredible day of my life," said the laureate, when contacted by phone by the Nobel Foundation.